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By Jlshton Hilliers 


-A.S It Happened 
THe Master-Girl 


The Master - Girl 


A Romance 


By 

Ashton Hilliers 


Author of 

As It Happened,” etc. 


G. P, Putnam’s Sons 

New York and London 
XLbc ftnickctbocKec fpreds 
1910 


Copyright, 1910 

BY 

G. P. Putnam’s Sons 



Ube f^nfcberbocliet flew ]l?orb 


MY CAVE MOTHER 


Quarried from world-old dark. 
Yellow, brittle, and dry. 

Labelled, gelatinised, stark 
Bare under glass they lie; 

Bone to its bone brought nigh, 
Nude to general view. 

Bones that of yore were — you! 

And bone of your bone am I ! 

The sun his course has changed. 

The sea-worm’s lair is dry. 

Your moon, aloof, estranged. 

Stares from an alien sky, 

Your time has long gone by. 

Your mountains have rumbled down, 
I dwell in a gas-lit town. 

But, bone of your bone am I. 

Lords of the wild that reigned 
By fear of fang and eye. 

Antlered, tusked, and maned. 

Under the ooze they lie. 

Their rivers have long run dry. 
Their forests fall’n and gone, 

But, the Soul that was you lives on. 
And, bone of your bone am I. 

Bend from your cavern-crypt. 
Mother, a kindling eye. 

Breathe thro’ my manuscript 
Strength of a day long by; 

Colour, vitality. 

Passion and laughter give! 

Till the story’s dry bones live, 

For — bone of your bone am I! 

A. H. 




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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER page 

Prologue i 

I. Love at First Sight . . .17 

II. A Housekeeping .... 30 

III. The Ghost-Bear • • • • 55 

IV. Hard Need, Mother of Invention . 69 

V. The Testing of the New Thing . 93 

VI. Renunciations .... 126 

VII. Short, Somewhat Dry, But Important 135 

VIII. The Flitting, and the Forerunner. 141 

IX. The Homecoming . . . .167 

X. The Spear-Throwing . . .181 

XI. The Passing of the Master-Girl . 223 

Epilogue 242 




PROLOGUE 


(which will be skipped by the young and impatient) 


TIE had come gently and observantly up the 
* ^ glen, tapping here and scratching there as he 
climbed, and ever and anon straightening an 
elderly back to deliver a small cough. Also at 
intervals he would turn his face to the way by 
which he had come to rest the plantar muscles and 
study the lie of the land. 

Chance-led he came and unadventurously, as 
one might say, and with no more premonition of 
impending change, or of this being a White Day 
in his life than had you, yourself, dear Reader, 
when you left your breakfast table this 
morning. 

He was a little person in the clerical wide-awake 
and dark tweeds of a don in vacation, elderly and 
grey, with heavy, lower-middle-class features 


2 Prologue 

refined by expression as a sunset refines a dull 
street. 

Something about the rounded shoulders and 
narrow chest bespoke the bookish man, the 
“scholar’s slope,” they used to call it. His hands 
were large and broad at the finger-tips; such must 
have done manual labour in their time, pick-and- 
shovel work, possibly. At the moment of his 
walking into this story they were — I will not say 
dirty, but redolent of the soil, for as he went he 
would still be fumbling in a roomy wallet which 
pulled down his shoulder, and be taking there- 
from for close and loving inspection this or that 
shapeless fragment of stone which he would pre- 
sently return to the society of its fellows. 

“It never came here by accident, — there is no 
such thing,” he murmured, conversing with him- 
self, thought discussing matters with thought, 
as do the thoughts of those of us who live the 
single life, or cherish interests which are unshared 
by those with whom we associate. “We have 
no example from this level,” he went on, turning 
in hand a something small and angular which 
he had picked up a few yards down the slope, a 
fragment of grey chert it was. ‘ ‘ Three conchoidal 


Prologue 3 

fractures are sufficient, when associated with such 
patination. Here are — six — eight minor flaws in 
these cutting edges, apart from the cross-fracture 
(patinated too). Yes, undoubtedly a used-up 
flake. And the thing has n’t travelled half a mile 
from home. Where ’s the flaw?” 

And to think,” he went on, “ that such evidence 
would be lost — wasted upon that young doctor- 
fellow. It is almost incredible, the crass ignorance 
of our so-called scientific men. Tried to interest 
him — ^no use. ‘Out here to climb,* he says. And 
with lovely things like these under his feet. 
Amazing!’* 

In fact, the Professor exhibited the impatience 
which the man of one idea feels for the man of 
another, and had even the personal repulsion which 
a man with the Oxford manner experiences for one 
who begins all his sentences with ''M'yess!** 

From which disjointed self-communings the 
reader will have already deduced that the Professor 
was an ethnologist, one of that small band of heroes 
who during the past hundred years have quietly 
dug out and fitted together the buried past of the 
human race, pelted all the while by Ignorance and 
Bigotry as they delved. 


4 Prologue 

The little grey Professor had come in for his 
share of pelting, not very recently, for his science 
has won her right to exist and speak her mind. 
Dogma, which would have burned the ethnologist 
some time back, and more recently did her best to 
starve him, has of late lifted the boycott. He is 
now merely glanced at with a pitying shrug and 
passed over when anything good is going, as 
“Eminent in his own line, but — peculiar,” and 
forthwith, the good thing goes to a safe man, 
someone who never did anything, nor ever will. 
This is Dogma’s way of coming round. The sons 
of the men who pelted us will build our sepulchres, 
never fear, whilst themselves making a cock-shy 
of some other poor devil whom their sons will 
canonise in turn; for the bigots, and the poor, ye 
have always with you. 

So it had come to pass that the Professor, by 
dint of giving to fossil-grubbing the forty-five 
years of life which he might have given to money- 
grubbing, and of spending upon the collection and 
verification of tiny fragments of unpopular evi- 
dence the time which he might have spent more 
profitably in the delivery of sermons in St. Mary’s, 
which would have delighted the stupid by the 


5 


Prologue 

''safety’’ of what they did n’t see the bottom of, 
and amused the clever by the preacher’s address 
in skating upon cat-ice, had come to know as much 
as was known about the Magdalenian Period. 

Others worked at river-drift, Thames gravels, 
and the terraces north of Amiens : and other some 
questioned the plateau deposits for eoliths, and 
got but uncertain answers, as to which our Pro- 
fessor reserved his judgment, unconvinced, but 
not wishing to be found sitting in the seat of the 
scornful at the Last Day. Neoliths he pretended 
to know nothing about whilst knowing everything 
that had been written. It was to the men of the 
Madeleine Cave, the giant hunters of Mentone and 
their artist fellows, that he had given his life. 

Now some studies can be pursued by the fireside, 
the mathematics of a boomerang, for instance, 
or why a breakfast egg, if you set it spinning 
vigorously upon its side will presently arise and 
spin upon its end. For the collation of Syriac 
gospels the neighbourhood of the Bodleian is as 
good a neighbourhood as any, but our Professor, 
whose fireside was within a stone’s throw of the 
Bodleian, cared for neither mathematics nor 
codices; and as regards his own particular study 


6 Prologue 

had long since known that to prosecute it as it 
should be prosecuted entailed days and weeks 
in clammy dark caverns long miles from anywhere, 
and subsequent months put in with a series of 
little sieves and acids and gelatine and what not, 
cleaning out and piecing together the uncleanly 
bits of brittle rubbish which eventually would 
constitute a New Fact and take a place in the 
growing chain of evidence. 

'‘To anybody capable of weighing testimony,’’ 
muttered the Professor, “this flake, which can 
only have been brought eighty miles up-stream by 
human agency, is as good evidence of Early Man 
at this end of the valley as if I had projected 
myself back a thousand centuries and seen the 
fellow break his tool and drop it.” 

He was somewhat out of breath with his climb, 
and moreover the going was none of the best; 
there was no path, and the slope was clothed with 
a tall growth of flowering weeds, mountain 
coltsfoot, and the great purple gentian, dogwood, 
juniper, and aconite. He replaced his hat after 
wiping his forehead, and, turning, parted the brush, 
to find himself faced by a low bluff, an outcrop 
of the underlying bedrock, jutting through the 


Prologue 7 

rough slope of debris into which the at-one-time 
precipitous sides of the glen had broken down. 
The bluff bore a ludicrous resemblance to the 
countenance of some ancient person asleep and 
half buried in bedclothes; there aloft was a massive 
nose and receding rocky forehead, nearer an upper 
lip overhung a transverse fissure, an open mouth, 
nearly filled with a tongue of soapy-looking brown 
stalagmite resting upon e. lower jaw of the same 
material hidden by a growth of martagon lilies. 
The Professor, unaware of what fate had in store 
for him, and, to tell the truth, expecting nothing 
out of the way, for a man of his years and ex- 
periences is past being sanguine, peered through 
the lush greenery, and saw beneath the edge of 
that lower lip a ji:^mble of small broken stone 
loosely cemented like ill-compacted concrete into 
which water has percolated (which was precisely 
what the material was and what had befallen it) . 

And, peering thus, a something caught the 
Professor’s eye. Now the Thing, whatever it 
might turn out to be, could not fly away, nor was 
its finder a callow novice that he should howk out 
his trove at sight and, maybe, destroy evidence in 
so doing, so he made himself a mental rough 


8 Prologue 

sketch of its surroundings before disturbing 
them. 

“A lot of weathering just here,” he muttered. 
“Glen half filled up since the watershed was cut 
back and the stream diverted. This was a cliff 
once upon a time, and this was a cave. Roof 
fallen in and cemented down to an ancient stalag- 
mite floor, breccia beneath, with, apparently, 
a layer of charcoal in it. — If you please!” this 
to the lilies; they did please, or at least made way 
for him ; he was down upon his elderly knees in the 
moist dirt breaking away the perished flooring of 
the old cave with his hammer; interested, of 
course, for the case was exactly in his line, but still 
without enthusiasm, when (see how our best 
things approach us unsought) — the man made 
his great find, the chance of his lifetime came to 
him, such a trove as he had ceased to expect, for, 
despite many long vacations and snatched Easters 
spent in patient and systematic grubbing, the man 
had not been one of the successful cave-explorers. 
But this was his day; a plate of stalagmite came 
away, and the disintegrated breccia beneath it 
gave to his cautious and practised handling, and 
lo, he drew forth the whole and perfect shoulder 


9 


Prologue 

blade of a Cave Bear — the mighty Ursus spelcBus 
himself, glazed all over back and front with a 
transparent film of carbonate of lime. 

The relic bore abundant marks of the chert 
knife, a shard of which was cemented down to 
it ; but, what raised its interest and value to the n^^ 
power, and made its discoverer’s heart flutter in 
his bosom, was the clear, boldly drawn lines of 
the picture with which the fiat surface of the bone 
was etched. Here was a find indeed, a leaf from 
the sketch-book of a Primitive, as good as any- 
thing found by Lartet and Christy. “Z^^lightful! 
a find at last!” exclaimed the Professor. “A con- 
temporary picture of SpelcBus, positively our first, 
I think. A bear attacking two humans, of oppo- 
site sexes apparently, but that seems unlikely. 
And what is this bent object in the hand of the 
indeterminate figure? — Weapon? But what?” 
screwing up his eyes. “Bent throwing-stick, 
Egyptian type? Boomerang? — very curious. 
Same object repeated in comer of picture behind 
bear; conceivably boomerang in flight. But as to 
this — er — epicene figure — I doubt its being female 
somehow! — and yet — ” He turned to the bone. 
“Hey, what have we here? — This I might almost 


lo Prologue 

say justifies a feminine interpretation; there 
appparently was a woman in the case,” for adher- 
ing to the back of the scapula was a bone needle ! 
“Rough work this, for a female,” remarked the 
Professor, wagging his head whilst polishing his 
glasses, and attempting to realise the scene. 
“This fellow was as big as a horse; a grizzly would 
be considerably smaller and with inferior jaw- 
power. The Magdalenian type was tall, I grant 
you, — she might have stood six feet and an inch, 
but — ” he wagged his head again in disapproval 
of a woman participating in so rough a field sport 
as this sketch indicated. The Professor was an 
old bachelor with mid-Victorian conceptions of the 
functions of womanhood. 

“There is no getting over the charcoal — it was 
a cooking-place, a hearth. The design, here, 
implies leisure and permanent residence, and the 
needle a lady. This was a home, a housekeeping.” 
He wrapped the relic in a silk handkerchief ; it was 
more precious in his eyes than the arm of St. Mark 
in those of a Venetian, and at least as authentic. 
This done, he turned to take stock of the place, 
conversing gently with himself the while. “Cave 
more roomy at one time — hardly to be called 


Prologue II 

a cave now, possibly was never better than un ahri, 
just the rock-shelter that I once spent an uncom- 
fortable night under among the Spanish Pyrenees.” 
He glanced up at the overhang, fringed with fern. 
” Calls for systematic exploration. Costly busi- 
ness at this height, short season and no quarters 
within any reasonable distance. Entails a camp, 
I fear. Wonder if the University would come 
down with a grant ? Who were these people V He 
stroked the handkerchief. *‘We get no nearer; 
a hundred thousand years is a wide gap — very. 
It makes the pre-dynastic Egyptian seem neigh- 
bourly. We dig, we fit together, but — they are 
too remote. Personally, I despair of getting to 
closer quarters with them in my time.” He 
mused with half-shut, speculative eyes. “The 
Myers and Gurney business gives unsatisfactory 
results at its best, and what communications they 
claim to have received seem chiefly from the re- 
cently deceased. Classic idea of a genius loci 
might have had something behind it — but, they 
approached the surmise with propitiatory sacrifices, 
— we try the planchette — and get piffle! Other 
plan seems sounder, but, how to set about it.^^ 
Language question a difficulty. Something might 


12 Prologue 

be attempted with an Esperanto of Eskimo and 
Bushman roots, eh?” he' smiled, “and the 
offering? Coarsish tastes, I conceive.” In com^ 
mon with some two hundred millions of his fellow 
Europeans, the Professor had never seen a sacrifice 
offered. The conception, once universal, has com- 
pletely passed out of our ken. That a trousered, 
cravatted white man should take an3rthing which 
he really valued, a horse, a motor, a family 
heirloom, a prize pedigree ram, a cask of claret— 
what you will, and deliberately destroy it in public 
for some definite religious object, or to purchase 
some visible result, recompense, or immunity is 
unthinkable. 

The Professor's mind fell back from this im- 
permeable wall of alien thought and custom. He 
sighed and shifted himself as if about to rise, still 
muttering. “I 'd give a good deal,” said he, 
without the faintest idea that he was really and 
veritably offering something to Someone, but 
sincere as far as he went, “for one hour’s genuine 
confab, seance, communication (call it what you 
like), with this couple, here. What wouldn't 
I give? — ah, say a clear month out of my life.” 

He said no more for that time, in fact he stopped 


Prologue 13 

short in the middle of his sentence and fell forward 
doubled up into a soft mass of the green stuff which 
he had treated with such little ceremony, nor did 
he fall alone; a sheet of stalactite, part of the 
ancient roof of the cave, had detached itself from 
the impending lip and fallen upon and with him. 

Was it possible that the genius loci had taken 
him at his word? 


7 




I 


Here Beginneth the Master-Girl 


3 


*5 



) 

d 


CHAPTER I 


LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 

'^HE younger girls picked fast in fear of the 
^ Master-Girl’s hard little hand, eating sur- 
reptitiously when her eye was off them. They 
made small progress, for what with the badgers and 
birds and the lateness of the season the whortle- 
berries were getting thin upon the rock. The 
Master-Girl ran a critical eye over the steep face 
below them. It was blue with fruit, but danger- 
ous, for the strata dipped and the stuff was soft. 
She peeped into her pupils’ skin wallets and uttered 
words of counsel, took the biggest satchel and 
went over the edge. It was finger-and-toe work 
and loose in places; she could hear smothered 
giggling above her as she climbed, and knew that 
the youngsters were indulging, but held upon 
her way. The fruit she had reached was blue- 
black, dead-ripe, and for some reason untouched 
by the birds for days past. She had never tried 
this face before; she began to pick. 

2 17 


i8 


The Master-Girl 


Then, all suddenly, her hands stopped, her eyes 
fixed, and every muscle grew tense, for from just 
below her feet had sounded a little faint sneeze ! 

Deh-Yan was sixteen, full woman as her people 
counted, the biggest, strongest, and bravest of 
the unmarried lasses of the Little Moons. She 
could throw a chert-headed assegai forty strides 
and make it spin as it flew. She could handle a 
stone hatchet dexterously, skin, cut up, and roast. 
She could rub fire out of two sticks more quickly 
than any member of the tribe, could use her bone 
needle, and split sinew to admiration. In fact she 
was more than well grounded in the domestic arts 
then practised by woman, and hence the chief, 
and the head-wife of that chief, were in no hurry 
that this household treasure should marry out of 
the clan, and had set her in permanent charge 
over the younger children. Deh-Yan was the 
First Governess. 

When a modem woman is startled she shrieks, 
a perfectly useless expenditure of energy, and 
worse, for the sound and its reaction upon the 
system of the shrieker prevent her from hearing 
more; also she not uncommonly shuts both eyes 
to shriek the better. Deh-Yan neither shrieked 


19 


Love at First Sight 

nor shut her eyes, although thoroughly startled 
and indeed frightened. Now Deh-Yan was not 
easily frightened; there were in fact but three or 
four things which she really feared, a wolf in open 
country, a bear or lion in any country, and a 
wife-hunter from beyond the ranges. This sneeze 
was the sneeze of a man, of a strange man in a 
neighbourhood and in times in which a stranger 
was an enemy confessed. So the girl held her 
breath tightly and remained perfectly rigid for a 
few seconds, strung for such activities of flight as 
might be possible under the circumstances. 

Nothing happened. Her presence was plainly 
unsuspected. And now the woman-nature in her 
proved itself. That small muffled sneeze excited 
in her bosom a vehement curiosity. Her duty, 
her safety, the safety of the brats committed to 
her guardianship, depended upon a silent and 
prompt retreat, but she must needs first see this 
man who had sneezed. 

With infinite precaution she lowered herself 
to a ledge a few feet beneath her, crawled, leaned, 
and peeped; farther and yet farther she craned 
for a view, and — there he was! She found herself 
overlooking the brow of a cave, a fissure in the 


20 


The Master-Girl 


limestone, and there, at the cave’s mouth, sat her 
enemy ! 

One steady, all-embracing glance assured the 
girl that this interloper was not of her clan, nor 
of its allies. The stone-axe beside him was plumed 
with crimson feathers, the wings of a Wall Creeper. 
Its owner must needs be a Sun-disc man, an 
enemy from the other side of the mountains, and 
one who was presumably hunting herself. 

What should she do ? Another girl would have 
crept stealthily away up the cliff; another girl 
would already have been in full flight, and would 
have run shrieking to camp. Then the braves 
would have turned out and found — ^nothing! 
and that girl would have been beaten for crying 
“Wolf!” 

Deh-Yan did not relish being beaten. She 
knew all about it ; if she had to run any risks these 
should not include that risk. She knew herself 
as strong as some men and as clever as most. In 
her heart of hearts she was somewhat jealous 
of men. She would have liked enormously to 
be a man and a chief. Moreover she had been 
for some time in silent rebellion against her 
lot. She was well aware that by right and usage 


21 


Love at First Sight 

she should have been sold in marriage any time 
within the past two years. An old maid was an 
unknown creature among her people. Savages 
do not appreciate the utility of old maids, any 
more than does our working-class to-day. No- 
thing but the covetousness of the Old Chief stood 
between this girl and a husband of one of the 
allied totems. She was too useful to part with at 
any price which her suitors could pay. D6h-Yan 
knew all this; there is not much that a savage 
woman aged sixteen does not know which concerns 
herself. There is nothing which answers to false 
modesty in your savage. Hence Deh-Yan was as 
discontented as a young person is likely to be 
whose future is blocked. 

This girl panted for a larger life than she was 
enjoying. She wanted to score, but being only a 
woman she was never allowed an inning. She 
knew by fair trial that she had the legs of any 
young brave in her tribe ; that she was a far better 
climber than most, and could handle a man’s 
weapons as well as any lad of her age. Yet, when 
there was an 5 d;hing to be done with axe or assegai 
it was their call, while she must be stitching a 
kaross or gathering sticks! The unfairness of it! 


22 


The Master-Girl 


And there had been no war in their country for 
some years, nor any chance for her to prove her 
capacity and courage in emergency. 

Here was her chance; here, just beneath her feet. 
’T was now or never; she would kill this woman- 
hunter and take his scalp back to camp. It would 
be a glorious feat, the women would be jealous, no 
doubt, and so might the younger men, but some- 
one would make a song about it, and her name 
would be remembered. That would be something 
that would comfort her when after a few brief 
years of overwork and child-bearing she was no 
longer supple and swift and had shrivelled into a 
blear-eyed, haggard old squaw of thirty- five, 
bullied and bidden about by her own sons. 

And it was really quite easy. As the villain sat 
there exactly below her he was so utterly in her 
hand. One smashing down-cast and her hatchet 
would be in his brain, and — well, it would spoil the 
scalp ! 

Was there no other way? She would peep 
again. He had not changed his position. From 
signs she could see that he had not changed it 
for days. His left foot fell inwards unpleasantly; 
it was broken above the ankle ! 


Love at First Sight 23 

The man was starving to death ! Water he did 
not want for a trickle oozed near him. 

Then Deh-Yan understood why the whortle- 
berries upon that cliff face had ripened untouched. 

Then the alternative occurred to her. 

The custom of the country considered it sound 
practice that an enemy taken alive should be 
tortured before being eaten. The girl knew this 
as a matter of course, just as a modem duchess 
knows that a garroter is whipped and a murderer 
hanged by the neck, nor is broken of her sleep by 
the knowledge. Deh-Yan had listened with horri- 
fied interest to the talk of old women who professed 
to have watched the process out, or nearly out. 
Immemorial custom sanctioned a woman’s pre- 
sence at the salutary spectacle. The girl was no 
more responsible for the usages and customs of her 
people than a St. Louis belle is responsible for 
lynching. 

So, there remained the alternative, a dreadfully 
thrilling, catch-you-by-the-throat alternative, of 
giving this wife-hunter over to the tribe. 

She played with the idea for a moment — women 
think quickly — then she acted, as women act, 
upon impulse. She would have a good look at the 


24 


The Master-Girl 


wretch first, would have her fill of jibing at him, 
teasing him, terrifying him if that were possible. 
At least she would tell this outlander who had 
come for her (proposing, as she knew, to knock 
her over the head in the dusk at the dipping-hole 
down by the river and drag her off half-stunned to 
be his trophy and slave for the term of her natural 
life) , she would tell this raider, I say, in good set 
terms precisely what was in store for him, and see 
how he took it. 

She peered and dropped a pebble. He looked 
up, and, albeit neither knew it, her business, and 
his too, was done. Incidentally the fates of 
countless millions of humans were spun by that 
brief passage of eyes. The horoscopes of empires 
were cast then and there. There and then was 
delimitated the eastern frontier of old Rome, 
the Parthian march, which the legion was never 
to cross. The issue of Senlac was decided; 
Agincourt and Cr6cy were lost and won. 

The seated man below leaned slowly back and 
turned his face up. It was the handsomest face 
the girl had ever seen. He was n’t at all what she 
had fancied, not by any means a brute, but quite 
young and — and — nice. 


Love at First Sight 25 

“You there said the man, quite naturally. 
Deh-Yan studying his face did not answer. 

“Come down and talk to me. I shall not eat 
you,” he smiled wearily. 

The girl pouted ; this was putting the moccasin 
upon the wrong foot. And then the bush she was 
holding by parted without warning. She snatched, 
but failed in getting hold, snatched again at 
sliding rock and stone, saw firmaments of con- 
stellations, and went to sleep. 

A few minutes later, not more, she awoke with 
a wet face. Someone was dabbing her sore head 
with water. Who? Where? She opened her eyes. 
The hunter, his own head bleeding from a fallen 
stone, was holding a sponge of wet moss to 
hers. 

She struggled up dizzily and sat within his reach, 
for the sill of the cave was narrow and the face 
beneath it fell steeply. There was no escape for 
her if he were still strong enough to strike. She 
thought for a moment that he had struck, for she 
was running red, she was sitting in a red puddle, 
but it was whortleberry juice. Her wallet had 
partially broken her fall. 

“I shan’t eat you,” he repeated. Nature had 


26 


The Master-Girl 


been pressing him to experiment. He had got 
SO far as to finger his knife. 

“Why?” she asked stupidly, thinking aloud. 
One of her Little Moon braves in similar circum- 
stances would have regarded the tumble of an 
enemy-woman as a sheer food-gift from the God 
of the Hills. 

“Sun-Men don’t eat girls,” he was saying. 
“Now you are well again, what will you do?” 

“I — don’t — know,” said D6h-Yan. He was not 
only very, very beautiful, but incredibly gentle; 
wholly, quite absolutely different from the young 
braves of her clan who had been making eyes at 
her, and whom the Old Chief had warned off — 
Pongu, Low-Mah, and Gow-Loo, rough, boastful 
fellows whom she had known and played with as 
boys on an equality, but who, since their midnight 
initiations, had seen fit to treat her as the dirt 
under their noble masculine feet. 

“Run away, now, if you feel strong again,” 
said the man quite gently, and seemed to mean 
it. “Run and fetch your braves. I am tired of 
sitting here.” (He looked dead tired, and oh, 
so thin!) “They will take my scalp and eat me. 
You Little Moons are not nice feeders.” 


27 


Love at First Sight 

“ They will roast you first, alive!'' said D6h-Yan 
very low, and covered her mouth with her hand, 
the unpleasantness of the practice coming home to 
her for the first time. 

“Yes, I know — ’tis my risk — I took it. But, 
unless they come quickly I shall be — dead first.” 

His words came slowly. He leaned back and — 
fainted. 

Deh-Yan looked him over as he lay and was 
conscious that new, and strangely pleasant, and 
unnamed feelings were moving within her. She no 
longer feared this man ! He had given her a horrid 
fright, but that was over, and had left no after- 
effects — savages are insensible to what doctors 
call shock. Nor did she hate him as she had 
thought she hated all Sun-disc Men, and had 
been prepared to hate this one until he had turned 
his face up to her and spoken gently. 

The girl’s wallet lay where it had fallen, dis- 
gorging crushed berries, and disclosing a certain 
ration of jerked meat which she had brought with 
her for the day. An extraordinary and wholly 
irrational desire suddenly possessed her to capture 
and tame this man. He promised to be nice in 
another sense than the gastronomical. She really 


28 


The Master-Girl 


was pitying him, but of this she was unaware, for 
pity was an emotion unknown to the Little Moons, 
who had no equivalent for the word in their 
speech. 

Having bathed his head in her turn and brought 
him round, the girl fed her man with bits of meat 
and presently found him stronger. It was not that 
the food was assimilated ; it would be an hour before 
it passed out of the stomach and was picked up and 
distributed, but the nerves sent word along that 
help had arrived and the system responded 
sympathetically. He looked better, more beauti- 
ful than any man had ever looked to D^h-Yan. 
Besides he was her discovery, her capture. 
No one else, man or woman, should share her 
possession; he was her very own. Here came 
into play the sense of property, but behind it 
gratitude awoke, a very rare growth in palaeolithic 
times, as rare as pity. She sat thinking, hand to 
mouth, her man still slowly eating, restraining his 
ravenousness, enjoying the food as he had never 
enjoyed food in his life of seventeen years or so. 

What was to be done next? A shrill cry from 
above brought on the crisis. The children had 
missed her and were growing anxious: if one of 


29 


Love at First Sight 

those youngsters caught a glimpse, had the faintest 
inkling, she would lose her treasure. 

Necessity was upon her; she must act, and act 
decisively. Swiftly shovelling with both hands 
the rest of her day’s food from the bottom of the 
wallet into the lap of the man, she whispered 
quick and low, “More to-morrow!” and began to 
re-climb the face. 

The boys above saw her coming and grinned 
roguishly at her slow movements, and more at her 
empty wallet and juice-stained kilt and bleeding 
head. She got her breath before chasing and 
smacking the biggest, then marshalling her little 
army, she kept it hard at work until the sun dipped 
behind the snows and ’t was time to be making for 
camp. 


CHAPTER II 


A HOUSEKEEPING 

“ ly /lORE to-morrow,’^ the Master-Girl had said, 
^ ^ ^ but to-morrow has a knack of taking the 
bit in its teeth. When Deh-Y^ looked forth at 
the weather very early next morning she knew that 
her path was blocked. Snow had fallen in the 
night and was still falling from clouds which were 
creeping down the wooded shoulders of the foot- 
hills after powdering their bare polls with the first 
fall of autumn. The nine white giants which 
never changed were hidden, and the horrid, 
bitter, frozen river of ice which came winding down 
from the closed valley which we call the Lap 
of the Gods, bearing dirt and stones upon its 
cracked and dirty back, was hidden too. 

The Old Chief sniffed more snow in the sky and 
bade strike the wigwams, the summer homes of 
his people. ’Twas ho, for their winter quart, ers, 
the range of southward-facing limestone caverns, 
30 


A Housekeeping 31 

a ten-fingers’ march down-stream. Certain braves 
were sent on ahead to prospect and smoke out the 
hyenas which were pretty sure to have usurped 
possession. 

Preparations began at once and the Master- 
Girl must make herself conspicuously useful and 
prominent in the flitting with whatever heart she 
set to it. As she worked and packed she thought 
hard and keenly as she had never thought before 
in her life. Hitherto her thoughts had been solely 
for her tribe, and upon topics upon which she 
could think aloud, but now, and for the first time, 
she had thoughts for someone outside the circle 
which had enclosed her since she could first re- 
member, and thoughts which must most carefully 
be kept to herself; yes, so rigorously that she 
gabbled loudly as girls who work in company 
will when they fear the suspicion of having any 
private thoughts at all. 

Before mid-day the march was begun, and the 
Master-Girl, still chatting loudly and thinking 
hard, must take her place on the trail, albeit with 
a very backward-looking heart. How was her man 
getting on ? This cold was bad for him, he had no 
bison-vskin robe with him. A wife-hunter’s kit 


32 


The Master-Girl 


is light, and no doubt the weather had been warmer 
when he left his people upon the other, the simny 
side of the ranges. Another night of this would 
finish him. She had given him her word, too, 
and the Master-Girl was truthful, as girls went 
in those days, which means she did n’t lie from 
choice, and had a natural pride in doing the thing 
which she had said she would do, even if it proved 
unexpectedly difficult. 

Thus it befell that without committing herself 
to any specific plan the Master-Girl kept a definite 
end resolutely in view, even to the extent of select- 
ing for her special burdens on the march certain 
articles which on another occasion she might have 
placed upon the back of one and another of her 
pupils. 

The braves formed line and scouted for game 
ahead of the old men in the centre. The squaws 
and girls staggered slowly behind, bowed beneath 
the property of the tribe, the accumulated get- 
tings of a summer’s hunting. There were also the 
household stuff and the babies. 

So big were the flakes that progress was difficult 
from the first, and presently became impossible; 
the smaller and more heavily laden girls could not 


A Housekeeping 33 

be kept going. It was no use beating the strag- 
glers. The Old Chief called a halt. When young 
things begin to get behind, someone will presently 
be missing. The braves, who had come upon 
bears’ sign, might follow it up; but a camp 
must be pitched for the night at any rate, and 
the girls must drop their burdens and go forth for 
firing before the snow covered all. Down went 
ill-secured bundles of skins, sheaves of assegais, 
wallets of jerked deer-meat, the miscellaneous 
lumber of a tribe of hunters, and out went the 
stick collectors; ’twas then or not at all. 

A little girl near the edge of the covert saw the 
Master-Girl bending beneath a fagot, saw her 
drop it and run, heard her shriek ''Bear!'' There 
was a headlong race through swirling flakes over 
and under fallen trunks and laden boughs: five 
minutes later the last of the runners was safe 
in camp. The mother-squaws were scolding, 
counting, cackling, but where was D6h-Yan? 
The hunters must be recalled, but were far ahead 
running a trail. By the time they were told of 
what had happened, and the pack had been lifted, 
the snow had covered all marks, indeed a good deal 
of property which had been thrown down in the 


3 


34 


The Master-Girl 


confusion was temporarily lost. For the rest of 
the short dark day the braves cast forward up 
this gully and that glen, but it was upon their 
return that a hound scratched up from under a 
drift a skin wallet, stiff and red. The finder of 
this grim relic brought it to the Old Chief in good 
faith. The elder looked, sniffed, snarled, “Fool! 
— this is not blood, but berry-juice I ” whereat 
Gow-Loo, a somewhat jolter-headed young savage, 
slunk away cursing the lost girl and wishing the 
bear a good meal of her. Later he cursed her 
more bitterly still. 

A hasty camp was pitched, ill- warmed, ill- 
lighted. The squaws huddled amid their shudder- 
ing children, the men never laid down their arms 
all night. A cannibal bear was the most terrible 
enemy known to the tribe; a taste for human 
flesh once acquired, and the fear of man once 
overcome, there was no knowing to what lengths 
such a beast might go. ’Twas opined to be no 
brown bear either, but a grizzly, or worse, 
a Cave Monster, one of the sort that even the 
lions feared, a brute that hung around the 
mammoth herd on its march, and occasionally 
cut off a calf. Nobody slept, and there was 


A Housekeeping 35 

but one topic of conversation, the fate of 
D^h-Yan. 

One boy, indeed, the boy whom she had spanked 
the day before, stuck to it that she had outrun 
him whilst making for camp, had passed him 
running silently and running wide, but none 
believed him, for he was not a truthful boy nor 
did his tale obtain a moment’s credence from the 
fact that next morning certain assegais, axes, and 
skins were missing. Such losses are incidental to 
a panic when women and girls run, and cry out, 
and drop things; they would be found, if and 
when the snow melted. But the snow did not 
melt. 

So, a day later, the Little Moons trailed down 
in close order to their winter quarters, leaving 
their summer camp under a robe of new snow. 
The fate of the First Governess added a delicious 
piquancy to the nightly tremors of the children 
whom she had whipped. The women regretted, 
grumbled, and speculated, without a misgiving, 
but a doubt remained in the mind of a certain 
young brave, which doubt he later imparted to a 
couple of his comrades, who turned it over silently 
in their minds. 


36 


The Master-Girl 


The man with the broken leg had made a poor 
night of it. He had finished the jerked deer-meat 
and was ravenously hungry, sickeningly, dread- 
fully hungry, and quite desperately cold. He 
had been telling himself all night between the brief 
naps permitted him by the various pains, cramps, 
and gnawings which assailed him, that this girl 
could not return, yet all through, something 
within him kept the spark of hope alight. A 
dark, thick, long-delayed morning, with eddying 
flakes as big as beech-leaves, put that spark out. 
Such weather he knew would break up the sum- 
mer camp at once. The girl, who, under other 
circumstances, might conceivably have paid him 
a single surreptitious visit, would be tied to her 
burden and to the line of march; every hour 
would lengthen the distance between them. No, 
it was all up. He must die — and this dying was 
very slow work — and abominably painful. He 
wished the braves of her tribe had found him. He 
would have shown those dirty Little Moons how 
a Sun-disc man could stand fire. Ugh! — he was 
a fool to have given the creature a second thought 
— :a mere Little Moon woman, useful perhaps when 
properly trained, but one of a backward tribe that 


A Housekeeping 37 

ate snake (think, snake!) and plumed their axes 
with owls’ feathers. 

The contempt and hatred felt by a savage for 
a man of another totem and habits is almost 
inconceivably bitter, nearly as fierce and irrational 
as the loathing entertained by an Orangeman for a 
Papist, or a Wee Free for a United. 

So the broken-legged man sat and shuddered, 
involuntarily, for he was true to stock, and made 
no more moan about his condition and prospects 
than does a trapped wolf. He had gone over his 
chances and appraised and laid the last of them 
down — worthless! But there was one which he 
had given not a thought to — the ardent strength 
of a woman’s first passion. 

Marly I am come” 

His dim eyes opened very slowly. ’Twas no 
dream; she was there, dark bronze-red with ex- 
ertion, and exhaling warmth. She was burdened, 
too; he marvelled dully how she had got such a 
bundle down that rock-face. A bison-robe was 
drawn under him, another laid over him; he was 
fed again, and again he revived, but more slowly, 
for this time he was far gone with cold and ex- 
haustion. He had not spoken. She was gone. 


38 


The Master-Girl 


He wondered. Then the mouth of the cave was 
darkened once more, and she was back with 
something, a small sheaf of assegais, two axes, and 
a dozen flake-knives. A second absence and a 
second return revealed her in another character, 
for there lay her fire-sticks, and scrapers, yes, and 
more skins, a housekeeping! 

The man's eyes were clear by this time. ‘ ‘ What 
will the Little Moons say to this?" he asked, his 
brown cheek bulging with food. 

The girl frowned and plucked at the hair of her 
kilt. “I am dead. A bear got me at our first 
camp. Oh, I did it well! We were out for wood; 
the snow was falling thickly; I laid a trail of my 
things up a side glen, mittens, wallet, and an old 
kaross, then I cried 'Bear!' and sprinted back to 
camp, picked up these things (none of mine — no 
scent for the pack. — Am I a child? — ) and doubled 
on our trail across the open where tracks were 
many. If a hound opens on my line they will 
whip him off for running heel ! — But there was no 
padding me after the first minute — the snow saw 
to that!" She grinned. “Neither spoor nor 
scent! — And while they are casting forward on 
a false line, I am here, — with you!" Her eyes 


39 


A Housekeeping 

shone, her voice, hard and hunter-like at first, 
fell softly and almost shyly at the end. 

Here again, as at their first interview, the 
man’s intelligence followed the girl’s speech lag- 
gingly. Her people and his had been separated 
for many generations “by mutual distrust and 
mountains.” Intertribal trade did not exist, 
nor peaceful communication, but internecine wife- 
stealing had kept alive a common glossary. When 
she had passed to another subject he recalled some- 
thing strange in her story: “the pack,” she had 
said; she had referred to “a hound” (“good wolf” 
was her word — Pul Yun knew bad wolves only). 
He did not interrupt his meal and her recital at 
the time with questions, but learned later that the 
Master-Girl’s people, more backward than his in 
most respects, had recently domesticated wolf- 
whelps. 

The man touched the skins wistfully; he hardly 
understood as yet. 

“But a bear would not eat bison-robe and 
hatchets. When you go back to camp — ” he 
began, feeling his way towards the incredible. 

“I am not going back to camp,” said Deh-Yan 
in a whisper. ‘ ‘ This is my camp . ’ ’ 


40 


The Master-Girl 


The broken-legged man sucked in both lips and 
stared, but his eyes kindled and smiled. ‘ ‘ It seems 
that I am to get my wife after all,” he said softly. 

The Master-Girl brought to the point — the point 
for which she had been scheming and working for 
the past day and night — was already modem wo- 
man enough to cover her mouth with her hand and 
shiver. After all then, she would belong to this 
man, not he to her; her captive had caught her, 
and thus soon! Well, it was to be, she had no 
retreat open to her, and — and — he was gloriously 
beautiful, and — and — so gentle! She nodded 
assent, her hand still over her mouth. The young 
people’s eyes met. It meant marriage. 

“It is well,” said the man. “We will — live!” 
his eyes shone. “For a little while, perhaps. 
But, who knows? The Gods of your hills may be 
kind to us. They have been kind to us so far, and 
have covered my hiding-place and your tracks 
with the ptarmigan’s feathers. Let us praise 
them! I do not know their names. As for the 
God of my tribe. She is hidden. She must wait. 
I will greet Her when next She shows me Her 
face. Meanwhile, be our time together long or 
short, I will sing my wedding song.” 


A Housekeeping 41 

He sat as erect as he was able, and staying him- 
self upon his palms and filling his chest, began 
to chant trumpet-lipped the hymn of his people, 
the one reserved for such occasions. Its exact 
terms are, perhaps fortunately, irrecoverable. 
It was even then of an immemorial antiquity 
(nothing changes more slowly than the wedding 
custom of a primitive people) ; this was an archaic 
survival, sanctioned by use and wont and age; 
there were words and idioms in it which were 
wholly foreign to the girl — imbedded fragments 
of the long-dead River-drift men’s gabble, frog- 
like guttural duckings of tongue and the tonsil, 
mingled with newer and nobler speech, vocables 
truly human and musical. The girl listened and 
panted and glowed, tingling to the tips of her toes. 
This was life! — Life! If, by any hap, she were 
tracked, caught, and dragged back to her tribe to 
suffer the frightful penalty reserved for a girl who 
so far forgot herself as to “steal her man” — as 
their speech had it (a phrase still used by our 
peasantry) — well, she would grin it out to the 
very last. She had lived ! 

How shall we picture the youngsters? Were 
they handsome? According to modern canons— 


42 


The Master-Girl 


no. High in the cheek, narrow and low in the 
brow, and somewhat heavy in the jaw one fancies 
— strongly outlined sketches of the Race-to-Come- 
after. Comely enough though, in one another’s 
eyes — oh (a detail this, but worth preserving) stal- 
wart exceedingly — he a good seven feet in height 
by our measure, and the Master-Girl six feet three. 

Suddenly in mid-chant the singer’s eyes rolled 
inward, his lip was drawn up from the teeth, and 
he was sinking back. She caught and cherished 
him to warmth and comfort. He was splendidly 
plucky, but weak. 

So passed the first day of these young people’s 
housekeeping. The girl got some kindling in 
before the light went, and made fire, and watched 
the night out beside her sleeping patient. The 
First Nurse. Before dawn she recognised and 
prostrated herself to the crescent Moon, her Totem 
to whom she gave credit for her successful elope- 
ment, and to whose mercy she committed her 
husband and herself. 

The next day he was better. D6h-Yan found 
herself able to leave her new treasure. It was 
hard, but business is business, and the girl was as 
practical as she was enthusiastic. 


A Housekeeping 43 

“It has stopped. I go to hunt — for us.’' 

The fall is too young,” he objected. ‘ ‘ Nothing 
will be afoot yet — no spoor.” 

“You shall see,” said the girl. “At least I 
can be getting more wood.” 

At the edge of the covert below the face Deh- 
Y an, moving slowly and with eyes all around her, 
saw a something tiny and black moving upon the 
whiteness, the jetty tail-top of an ermine in his 
winter pelage. Pursing her lips she gave the 
shrill, small squeal of a leveret in difficulties and 
was presently looking into the face of the eager 
little robber who had raced to her lure. Her 
throwing stick broke his back. Deh-Yan was 
not fond of stoat, no one is, but meat is meat; 
she cut out the gland and pouched him. Ob- 
serving that his muzzle was bloody, she worked 
his line to heel and coming upon the hole he had 
just left, dug down to a family party of hedge- 
hogs laid up for their winter sleep in beech- 
leaves, each as fat as butter, and only one of 
them sucked. Here, with economy, was meat 
for three days at a pinch. She returned to the 
cave silently pleased with herself to meet the 
silent approval of her man. 


The Master-Girl 



For the rest of the day she accumulated fire- 
wood. Her man should be warm. 

At night Pul Yun, as he bade her call him, 
groaned in sleep. By daylight his wife would 
examine his hurt. The limb was sufficiently 
wasted to show the overlapping of the bones. It 
was a simple fracture of the fibula and the muscle 
was enfeebled enough to tempt her to put into 
practice the woman’s lore learned of the Old 
Chief’s Head Wife. 

“Hold to the rock — hard — I shall pull.” He 
braced himself, she drew with slow power and felt 
the limb give, then, venting pent breath, relaxed, 
and heard the broken ends of the bone cluck neigh- 
bourly as they came to a renewed understanding. 

“Now, lie upon your sound side, and the leg 
will keep its shape.” 

Her man took breath, for the operation had 
hurt him abominably, albeit he had not let the 
least little moan. “O woman, what talk is this? 
It is a moon-and-a-half of a matter before broken 
leg-bone knits strongly; how am I to keep it in 
one shape so long? — when I am sleeping, say? 
Wah! You are very clever, but I shall break it 
again before morning.” 


A Housekeeping 45 

The girl thought hard, sitting at the entrance of 
the cave and studying the curve of the young 
Moon just visible, afloat in the darkening blue, 
her people’s Totem and her own, and her favourite 
object among the heavenly host. “O Moon, 
Little Moon, teach me to medicine my man!” she 
murmured. “Here are not the things which we 
of your people use in such a case. This cave-floor 
is hard rock, I cannot drive little pegs to keep the 
limb in place, nor while this frost holds can I dig 
clay to make a mould to hold it Arm. What shall 
I do for him, O Little Moon?” 

And, behold it came, a thought, an expedient, 
bright, and wonderfully simple, and perfectly 
novel and practicable. Arising without a word, 
she fetched six straight hazel-wands, and having 
wound the limb carefully in a deer’s hide, bound 
it within a cradle of splints. ’T was new practice, 
she had never seen or heard of such work before, 
nor had her man ; but he let her have her way with 
him, for he was not only very weak and weary, 
but the fellow saw that he had fallen into the 
hands of a wise woman. We, too, are by way 
of recognising that here was that rare and in- 
valuable creature, a born inventor. Such are of 


46 


The Master-Girl 


altogether incalculable value to the race. And, 
bethink you, how seldom do they appear. Our 
own age, verily an age of miracles, is altogether 
exceptional; never in the whole course of man’s 
history has there been such a time. Dimly one 
descries a period, the so-called Second Dynasty, 
when the Egyptian brain, then young and new and 
plastic, scintillated, once in a century or so, ad- 
mirable inventions, the wedge, the lever, inclined 
plane, wheel and axle ; but who invented anything 
since until our own day? Gunpowder and print- 
ing, the arch and steel, the mariner’s compass, 
you ’ll remind me, and what else in the course of 
six thousand years? Within the memory of living 
men if an Oxford don wanted light in haste he had 
recourse to flint and steel and an oil lamp. If he 
wished to reach London in haste a good horse was 
his best servant. Ramses the Great would have 
done no otherwise in either emergency. Most 
of earth's greatest men have harboured an inex- 
plicable prejudice against inventors, the Greek 
philosophers, for instance ; even the greatest gen- 
erals in history would trust nothing that was new. 
Alexander, Hannibal, Marlborough conquered 
with the ordinary weapons of their day; Welling- 


A Housekeeping 47 

ton distrusted the rocket and preferred Brown 
Bess to the rifle; Napoleon (fortunately for liberty 
and England) sneered at inventions and had a 
nickname for inventors. 

No, not only the practice of invention, but the 
very theory of it is modem : the mere idea that there 
is anything that can be discovered (without mortal 
sin) is of yesterday. Your ancient inventor 
investigated at the risk of his life, and published 
his invention in terror. However obvious and 
useful it might chance to be, if it hit a vested 
interest, or offended a priest, the man would be 
burned for having commerced with the devil. 

So with the lowest savages; not the filthiest of 
their foods, the most objectionable of their cus- 
toms or the silliest and clumsiest of their tools or 
weapons, but is bound up in some way with their 
religion, and protected from innovation by its 
sanctions. Did not Mumbo Jumbo give them the 
throwing-stick in the days before the Moon began 
to chase his sister the Sun? Who so presumptu- 
ous then as to suggest any improvement upon 
the throwing- stick, the divinely inspired throwing- 
stick? Let him be skinned alive and eaten, says 
Mumbo Jumbo, and let the best and tenderest of 


48 


The Master-Girl 


his chops be the portion of me, Rum Turn, the 
High Priest of Mumbo Jumbo. 

Thus hampered, man’s intelligence moves 
slowly, and racial advance has not been precipitate 
in Korea, say, or Spain. Among the Little Moons 
the very possibility of inventing an)rthing had been 
long forgotten. From his childhood to his death 
each member of the tribe moved in a web of rou- 
tine, and did what he did at stated times because 
it was the custom of the community. There was 
never any change, improvement was impossible, 
for the corpus of the law which regulated his life 
and bound him hand and foot resided in the 
retentive memories of the oldest and most pig- 
headed of his people, themselves brought up in a 
similar environment and mentally incapable of 
breaking away from it in any one smallest par- 
ticular. 

Hence this departure from practice in the matter 
of treating a broken leg filled the man’s bosom 
with wonder too deep for words. He found 
himself encumbered with novel feelings, feelings 
for which he had no suitable vocabulary. When 
a young brave went on a wife-hunt, it was not to 
be supposed that he should respect or reverence 


A Housekeeping 49 

the dejected and sulky captive whom he drove 
home before him. That in the course of years 
their mutual relations might improve, that some 
regard for the mother of his sons, some admira- 
tion even for her capacity and judgment might 
arise was possible, but at the first her lot was a 
sorry one; she stood for the proof of her captor’s 
strength, courage, and address; his slave, no more. 

But Deh-Yan stood for nothing of the kind. 
And what she did stand for Pul Yun was at a loss 
to explain to himself. Having nothing to do, he 
watched her about the cave and marvelled at her 
-—also at himself and at something which was 
going on inside him. 

And in her, though he did not know it. The 
first passage of their eyes had begun it, but much 
had happened since. She had touched him. She 
had handled, lifted, supported him — given him ex- 
quisite pain (as she knew by intuition), fed him, 
rubbed his cold stiff limbs back to warmth and 
suppleness. Needless to say that this girl had 
never had occasion to deal thus with a man-creature 
of her own age hitherto. What she had done, she 
had done with a steady and purposeful hand, but 
now it was over, she found herself shaking as if 


so 


The Master-Girl 


from cold. Yet she was not cold. What was it? 
Deh-Yan could put no name to this novel ex- 
perience, and whilst she thought upon it, seated 
as far from her patient as the limits of the cave 
permitted (for the revulsive fit was upon her) , it 
came over her with a horrid clearness how near 
she had been to handing this delightful, trouble- 
some, beautiful, helpless, bewilderingly strange 
creature-comrade of hers over to the braves of 
her tribe. With a momentary gleam of insight, 
she saw him as he might have been at the stake. 
The sight wrung her heart. Ooh! — she groaned 
and clapped a hand over her mouth. Then, with 
a second gleam of prescience, she saw herself in a 
like predicament — as might yet be her fate — and 
laughed! 

“What are you laughing at?” her man was 
asking weakly. 

‘ ‘ I was thinking that I must get to my hunting — 
we cannot live long upon a stoat and a wallet-full 
of hedgehogs. Also I am thinking we must have 
skins for leggings and mittens,” smiled the girl, 
lying glibly to conceal feelings of which she was 
half-ashamed. 

The frost had not given, and wild life, hunger- 


A Housekeeping 51 

nipped, was getting over the first paralysing fear 
of making tracks. The big game, elephants and 
bison, would have moved down-stream for the 
winter, and lion would have followed them, and 
bear laid up to sleep off his fat. She knew as 
much. The edge of the covert was printed thickly 
with slot of hare, badger, fox, and marten. She 
could see that chamois and stone-buck had come 
down, but chamois and stone-buck were kittle 
cattle. There were the broad pads of a big 
tom-lynx. The girl looked them over narrowly, 
and knew them from wolf by the sign of hair upon 
the soles of the feet. She dreaded lynx, but meat 
she must have. There among the tangle of creep- 
ing pine (the Pinus pumulus which makes such 
desperately hard going) was the well-beaten run 
of capercaillie. D^h-Yan followed it into the 
scrub as far as a fallen spruce, and set that log 
with twenty springes of deer-sinew, then, fetching 
a circle, she beat the covert with some small 
outcry back towards her nooses, and with results. 
The master-cock, a great black-bearded tyrant, 
twice as big as his wives, had got a hairy leg 
into trouble but had broken away, but not 
before six youngsters and hens, hastening to 


52 The Master-Girl 

their lord’s assistance, had been themselves 
ensnared. 

“Good!” said the man when the huntress 
panted up the cliff -face carrying an almost throt- 
tling necklace of heavy birds. “We have food for 
days. Give that covert a rest, Deh-Yan. Also 
I have another reason. Listen. I. dreamed of a 
hare whilst you were away. Danger is near.” 

Without a word, weary as she was, the girl 
left the cave and ascended the rock-face, climbing 
slowly and very carefully, keeping to the bare 
exposures lest she should leave incriminating sign, 
and, ensconcing herself in a juniper-bush, spied 
far and long over the white expanse. 

The dream had already come true. There, 
below her and more than four miles away by our 
measurement, three tiny black specks moved 
slowly across a snowfield between two dark belts 
of wood. 

The girl watched with a hardening mouth, 
bending upon these crawling black specks the 
wonderful, long-sighted eyes of a savage. Nearer 
they came and nearer; she made out and named 
each. There was Low-Mah, there was Pongu, 
and, worst of all, there was the detested Gow- 


A Housekeeping S3 

Loo, a brave whom she most particularly disliked, 
and with whose property she had accordingly 
made free when she left the tribe. 

Plainly the man had missed his axes and spears, 
had revisited the camp where they had last been 
seen, and had not found them. Pongu in like 
manner had missed his bison-robes, and Low-Mah 
certain deerskins, properties which if cast away 
by girls in a panic-stricken rush would have lain 
where they fell. Each had his dog with him, 
and having failed in finding what they sought at 
the site of the snow-camp, they were casting up 
the glen with a certain air of grim determination 
which the watcher did not like. 

They had reasoned the matter out and had 
ceased to believe in that bear, albeit just what 
had induced an unmarried girl to break away from 
her tribe and make a winter-hunting of her own 
was beyond them. It was a matter which needed 
clearing up. 

There must be no fire for her man that day, nor 
next day, nor for a handful of days. Deh-Yan 
spied from her bush, her patient from his cave, and 
once he heard the three hunters pass below him. 
A sprinkle of fresh snow had covered the girl’s 


54 


The Master-Girl 


tracks or this story would never have been written, 
but they had lit upon one of her springes and were 
justly scandalised. Her motive in absconding 
was still a mystery, but such conduct was out- 
rageous. They would see the matter out and were 
curious in devising punishments for the truant. 

But next day the girl beheld them in full flight 
down the glen before an angry bear. 

This was to exchange one danger for another. 
It might well be that the dream portended this. 
Wolf, the dwellers in the cave did not fear, for no 
wolf could climb so steep a face, but a grizzly can 
go wherever a man can go on rocks. 

Deh-Yan told her fears to her husband, who bade 
her block the cave-mouth with big stones and let 
a spear be always beside him. Poor defence, but 
better than none; his arms were regaining flesh. 


CHAPTER III 


THE GHOST-BEAR 


HE cold increased. Pul Yun, debarred his 



* usual exercise, suffered in his circulation and 
felt nipped within the robes which his nurse heaped 
upon him. “Mittens thou shalt have,” said she, 
and made her promise good at the charges of a 
brace of blue hare, whose longs-and-shorts she 
patiently followed up until her throwing-stick 
decided the ownership of the peltries which she 
claimed. Pul Yun watched her stitching; a needle 
snapped. ‘ ‘ My wife will be wanting a touch of my 
skill,” he said, and selected a shank bone, slim 
and straight, split it, and scraped the more 
promising piece to a point. 

“That is all very well,” said the Master-Girl, 
“but how about the eye? I have no bits small 
enough for drilling a needle-eye. We must punch 
our holes in the skin, and poke the sinew through 
with a forked bone, as when one nets.” 


55 


5 ^ 


The Master-Girl 


“That makes clumsy stitches,” remarked the 
man. “No, I do not think we shall come down 
to the punch. Thy needles are pit-eyed.” 

“We always make them so; how else? — with 
the centre-bit, a bent stick, a twist of hazel,” said 
the girl. 

“But we use the strung-drill. Hast never seen 
it?” She stared. “Then there is something 
that even a Little Moon woman can learn from her 
man !” He spoke in humorous mockery, but with 
a spice of malice, for truly this astonishing squaw 
of his had forereached upon her master in a manner 
beyond all precedent ; would he ever get the whip- 
hand of her again? 

She understood; she crawled to him cooing 
gently; patted his hand; they rubbed noses. 

“Why are my needles clumsy?” she asked 
humbly, and he showed her that her people’s 
method of boring the eye, a funnel-shaped 
hole driven from each side and meeting mid- 
way, necessitated a broader head than a small 
true hole drilled straight through at one 
asking. 

“Our holes are big and shallow, yes, like ant- 
lion pits,” she laughed. “That is because our 


The Ghost-Bear 


57 

centre-bit wobbles; but how can one help the 
centre-bit wobbling?” 

From the raffle of bones upon the floor (Cave- 
man was an untidy fellow, or ’tis little we should 
know about him) — from the remains of his yester- 
day’s dinner Pul Yun chose a young roe’s shin- 
bone, sawed off the joint with care and sucked out 
the marrow. “I want,” said he, “a small sharp 
stone to sit in that hollow. There are such in 
the bellies of bigger stones”; — he meant quartz- 
crystals, and the Master-Girl nodded; so far his 
requirements presented no difficulty. “And I 
must have,” he went on, “a couple of smooth rods 
of rowan or hazel as long as my arm; also an 
elder-stick as long as my hand.” 

There was meat in the larder for two days; the 
nurse was keen to provide playthings for her con- 
valescent, nor was she herself loth or incurious; 
within the hour she was back with a handful of 
sparkling gems from the hollow of a big pebble, 
and a pair of rods, one of which she watched her 
husband bend and string with a thong of deerskin. 

Presently he had found a shard of rock-crystal 
to his mind, and had hafted it in the hollow bone 
with a morsel of pitch picked from his axe-head 


58 


The Master-Girl 


and warmed in the embers. (It is singular, but 
beyond controversy, that the Old Stone men who 
used the drill so adroitly for small work, and could 
pierce the enamel of a bear’s tooth, or the nacre of 
a sea-shell when a necklace was required, never 
applied their invention to the hafting of their 
weapons. An axe was apparently too serious a 
matter to be bored, nor did the presence of a 
natural hole in a flint pebble suggest the insertion 
of a stick, any more than the hole for the handle 
in a trade hatchet appeals to a South-Sea Islander 
of one of the more backward races; no, he stops the 
hole with gum and hafts as his forefathers did, and 
as Pul Yun and Deh-Yan did, in a cleft stick.) 

What next? — D6h-Yan, still very much in the 
dark but longing for light, watched her husband 
with absorbed attention. Now he had laid aside 
the strung rowan-rod and the armed bone for a 
moment, and was at work upon the elder-stick, 
working one end of it to a smooth rounded head, 
driving into the tough, yielding, pithy hollow of 
its opposite extremity the sharpened shank of 
the armed roe-deer’s bone as far as it would go. 
He had now to his hand a short, solidly-made 
dagger, stoutly cylindrical in form, and bearing 


The Ghost-Bear 


59 


as its head a glittering morsel of crystal. He next 
fastened the slip of hare’s bone which he proposed 
to convert into a needle firmly to the handle of his 
axe, and bound the axe in turn to the thigh of his 
sound leg, raised his knee, and said: 

“Now, I begin!” 

“Wah! — this is a wonder! But have a care of 
thy broken ankle!” 

‘ ‘ I will have a care. Give me that strung rowan- 
rod.” He took it from her hand, bent it yet more, 
and looped the slackened thong once around the 
barrel of his drill, or bit, and then, using his own 
breast and left hand as a bearing for the smooth 
butt, applied the crystal point to the blind head of 
the needle and drew the bent rod swiftly from left 
to right. The drill revolved, its armature began 
to mark the bone, to penetrate infinitesimally. 
He reversed the action and again the tool spun 
and cut. He persisted, it began to excavate. 
Pul Yun was no novice at the work, he had an 
instinctive appreciation of what his tool would 
bear, he knew to a nicety just what the fragile 
bone might be trusted to take without splitting. 

“I am through, or nearly,” said he, the sweat 
running into his eyes, for he was wholly out of 


6o 


The Master-Girl 


condition and the attitude was trying. “Let us 
turn the needle. I will work a little from the other 
side and then we can give it a point and a polish.’' 

The Master-Girl, meanwhile, overlooked this 
new magic of the Sun-Men, with a breathless 
frowning intentness which (and this marks the 
woman we have to deal with) had no contempt in 
it. Your savage has a fathomless irrational scorn 
for the arts and usages of any other tribe than his 
own. A traveller who had photographed a group 
of Fingo women at their field work showed them a 
picture of a similar group of Pondos taken a fort- 
night before; there was a shout of derisive laughter. 
“They are using the long-handled hoe — Baboons!” 
Upon his return journey he showed the Fingo 
photograph to his Pondo friends ; again the yell of 
scorn. “They are using the short-handled hoe — 
the Baboons!” 

The girl’s cast of mind, or her relation to this 
man, saved her from this fatal attitude of sterile 
complacency. She waited and watched, reserving 
judgment. Full approval was conceded, with 
an undercurrent of doubt as to the possibility of 
improvement. To her husband the size and curva- 
ture of his implement were fixed by custom and 


The Ghost-Bear 


6i 


unimprovable. To D^h-Yan these dimensions 
were open questions. She experimented; would 
not a longer rod give longer strokes? He stared, 
but, being sensible beyond the run of men, and 
grateful somewhat, and what was possibly more 
to the point than all else, having no one to laugh 
at him^ consented to give the larger drill a trial 
and presently found his tool biting faster. 

Within the week the girl, having such a head 
upon her brown shoulders as is conceded to a 
savage but once in a thousand generations or so, 
after much watching and brooding made for her- 
self a bigger drill from a bough of her own height, 
and seating herself opposite to her man, drove the 
bit rapidly, whilst he rested his arms and watched 
the holes deepen at a pace quite new to his ex- 
perience. It was no longer needles but hunting- 
whistles. 

It was whilst thus at work, he, seated with his 
face to the mouth of the cave, beheld the broad 


1 Children, countrymen, and savages are keenly sensitive 
to ridicule. It is the fear of failure and of becoming the butt 
of his fellows which keeps many a young labourer from 
attempting anything new. To have tried and failed is to 
incur some opprobious by-name that may stick to a villager 
through life. Rustic wit is cruel and drearily long-lived. 


62 


The Master-Girl 


five-clawed fore-paw of a bear thrust up from be- 
low, feeling for foothold upon the smooth sill of 
the dwelling. The woman saw the living fear in 
his eyes, sprang for an axe, and was hacking hard 
at the protruding toes before they found their 
purchase. Thrice she beat them down, and when 
the great wrinkled, snarling muzzle and fanged 
cavern of a mouth came up within reach, she was 
too urgent and too sudden to be faced. The 
enemy withdrew deliberately beneath a pelting 
storm of stones not ill-directed. 

It was all over, a brief struggle of wills between 
a girl and an ogre, but how intolerably long had 
it seemed to the footfast convalescent. It was 
over, and Pul Yun listening to the final slide and 
scratching upon the rock and crash among the 
bushes beneath, drew deep breaths and looked 
upon this woman of his with a new and huge 
admiration, for not once had she cried for help, 
but thrice and four times had she bidden him keep 
still and respect his injured limb. 

There are people who give vent to the surplus 
excitement generated by an adventure in chatter 
and exclamation; there are others who take it 
quietly. Pul Yun was one of the latter; he felt the 


The Ghost-Bear 


63 


imperative need of silence in which to review the 
thing, and see whether he had played the game. 
Had D^h-Yan fallen into tears or gigglings, he 
would have been hard put to it to have borne 
with her ; but it appeared that she was of his own 
way of taking things, and when for some while 
neither had spoken one word their mutual respects 
had deepened. 

“Woman, that was well done!’' said the man at 
length, and the girl nodded with a proud humility. 
She had played a great innings and knew it, but, 
having an intuitive understanding of man, she 
wisely forebore to celebrate her achievement with 
vaunts, as a brave of her tribe would certainly 
have done under like circumstances. 

“We were near the end of our stones,” remarked 
Pul Yun, looking about him. 

“We had only one left — this — ” replied the girl. 
“I kept it to the last.” 

“That was lucky,” admitted her husband, 
meaning more than he said, but it was a maxim in 
old days that a woman was little the better for 
praise. 

“He will come again,” he added doubtfully. 

“Next time I — we will kill him,” said D^h-Yan 


64 


The Master-Girl 


a little above herself. “I will get more stones, and 
bigger, for his entertainment.” 

“Yes, he will be back again; not to-morrow, 
perhaps, but within a while, when he has turned 
it over in his mind and thinks we have forgotten 
him,” resumed the man, ignoring the woman's 
brag. 

D6h-Yan was sensible of her master's silent 
censure, and of a sex-superiority too secure of 
itself to need assertion, and shrunk back half 
meekly, half resentfully, but within a little found 
herself rising quietly and resolutely against its 
injustice. It must be so at present, no doubt, but 
it should not always be so. Meanwhile, her hus- 
band, satisfied with the effects of the snubbing, 
was speaking again. 

“We shall certainly be looked up before long. 
But, there is something I do not understand about 
that bear, D^h-Yan. In my country, south of the 
ranges, a brown bear ambushes and waylays, but 
rarely attacks by day and in the open. Is it more 
usual here? Are your people’s weapons so weak 
that a bear has no fear of them ? or is this a Ghost- 
bear, think you? This beast should either have 
followed your tribe down, or have laid up for the 


The Ghost-Bear 


65 


winter. What is he doing abroad in snow? Is 
he a bear at all ? Did any warrior of your tribe die 
during the past summer?” 

“This was no brown bear — but a grizzly of the 
big kind,i — but — I think — ” she paused, her 
hand over her mouth. “Saw-Kimo, the Old 
Chief’s son, died — ^was found dead,” she muttered 
reluctantly, for death is a very mysterious thing 
to your savage, and to speak of the recently 
deceased is unlucky; they may be about, any- 
where, at your elbow, and may take offence; 
who can say? 

“Was found dead?” questioned the man. 

“Yes . . . no one saw how it happened. ... A 
stone was thought to have fallen ; so said Gow-Loo 
who found him.” 

“Oho, Gow-Loo? Was not that one of the three 
who came a-hunting you? Now tell me D^h-Yan, 
and speak the thing that is ” 

“I always do!” exclaimed the girl. 

“I believe you, I shall always believe you. So, 
tell me, was not this Saw-Kimo one of the 
young braves who had 'asked for you? Yes? — 
And had not this Gow-Loo asked for you too?” 

1 She meant cave bear, Ursus spelceus, now extinct. 


5 


66 


The Master-Girl 


The girl nodded. “I was to have been given to 
Saw-Kimo, but — he died.” 

“It is very unlucky when stones fall in that 
manner. Gow-Loo painted his face for his friend, 
no doubt, and made great lamentation, as I should 
expect. Was it not so? — But, is there no witch- 
doctor in your tribe? Was there no smelling-out 
for blood?” 

The girl shook her head. “There was talk of 
it in the Old Chief’s teepee, but — Gow-Loo’s 
people are strong, and he and his two friends, Low- 
Mah and Pongu, who always hunt with him (it 
was they who came upon the winter-hunting) — 
they were thought to have made gifts to the 
medicine-man and put him off the line, if indeed 
there was a line. I do not know — how should I ? 
— I am only a woman. I did not like Saw-Kimo — 
much; but — ” with sudden heat, “I hate Gow- 
Loo — and the others.” 

“Humph,” grunted Piil Yun, “it is curious 
that three braves who are tied up in a knot of this 
sort, and who are keen enough to go upon a winter- 
hunting together, should have run from a bear as 
they ran from this; right away down-stream and 
out of the valley, too. It is strange. But, if 


The Ghost-Bear 67 

they had reason to think he was their old friend 
Saw-Kimo that would explain a good deal.’^ 
“Perhaps he was very fierce — they had touched 
him, I think,” argued the girl, willing to believe 
anything rather than that she and her crippled 
husband were beleaguered by her dead lover in the 
form of a Ghost-bear. 

“Touched? — what makes you think so?” 

‘ ‘ He seemed to climb clumsily. He had but one 
fore-paw to which he could fully trust, as it seemed 
to me. I watched him go, and he went lame in 
the shoulder, and it was not my stones that did 
that — no, there was a something there, a stump of 
a spear, as I think, and that is why he has lost 
some of his fat and cannot lay up for the winter.” 

“And, being too slow to catch bison-calf, he 
comes for us. My dream was a true sending. He 
is certainly your Saw-Kimo and will assuredly 
come back for you, Deh-Y^.” 

“And so will they,'' muttered the girl, “for 
they must know they have left a spear-head in 
him and that he must be getting weaker. They 

will give the wound time to ripen and then ” 

“It is time I was about again,” growled the 
crippled hunter, and set to work upon his drilling 


68 


The Master-Girl 


with a grim face. D^h-Yan was kneeling upon 
his right hand, her left hand resting loosely upon 
the cave floor within his reach. Upon the impulse 
of the movement and without word or look, Pul 
Yun struck swift and hard at the brown wrist with 
the elder bit that he was holding; the stick en- 
countered the rock and split, for the slim brown 
wrist had been withdrawn with nimble rapidity. 
The eyes of the young people met and smiled — 
it was their first attempt at play. “My husband 
sees that I can take care of myself,’* remarked 
the girl sedately. 

“That is well, Deh-Yan, for with a Ghost-bear 
and a hunting-party of three in this glen, a wo- 
man has need of eyes in the back of her head,” 
was the comment of her lover. 


CHAPTER IV 


HARD NEED, MOTHER OF INVENTION 

days wore. D^h-Yan went about her 
^ hunting with extreme precaution, cultivated 
eyes all over her brown body, pricked her small 
hairy ears perpetually, and moved through the 
most tangled coverts of trailing pine as silently as a 
fox. 

Acting upon her husband’s suggestion, she laid 
a trail about the main glen, and having completed 
the circuit, sat a day out ambushed beside her 
tracks to wit if any creature, whether lynx, wolf, 
ghost-bear, or man should be following up her 
spoor. None showed, and she grew uplifted of 
heart again, and as luck would have it, her hunting 
prospered for once beyond reason. 

A roebuck met her face to face in a pass between 
two rocks. The small fellow was more than full- 
headed, he bore eight three-inch tines, any one 
of which was death to a naked woman, and for 

69 


70 


The Master-Girl 


a moment meant battle ; but after a startled grunt 
tossed his head and doubled in panic. Deh-Yan’s 
throwing-stick broke his off hind leg below the 
hough, and she finished him after a fight in which 
the odds were still about even, for the charges 
of a roebuck at bay, even when upon three legs, 
are sudden and very difficult to avoid in deep 
snow. If he had once got the girl down she would 
never have risen again, but the affair went well, 
and Deh-Yan, toiling mightily, won home with a 
load of meat and a deep-piled, mossy skin for her 
man to sit upon. 

She had restocked the cave with missiles; scores 
of stones, as heavy as she could manage, were 
piled against the rock-sides of the dwelling ready 
at need. This was a three days’ labour, and it was 
whilst resting after her last load and discussing the 
arrangement of their stores of artillery, that the 
singular incident occurred which resulted in — 
but I will not anticipate. The element of luck 
mingles in the best-laid schemes of human intelli- 
gence, chances lie thick about us, and genius 
consists in the recognition and utilisation of 
chance. 

These strung-drills were common form to Pul 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 71 

Yun, who had known them all his life, and expected 
nothing more from them than they were made to 
yield, and had long since disclosed of use. As 
for playing with them, it had no more occurred to 
him to amuse himself by playing tricks with a 
strung-drill than it occurs to your harvest-man to 
use his scythe-handle as a vaulting-pole, or to your 
gardener to practise throwing with his fork at a 
target, or to toss and catch his spade. The im- 
plements of labour are invested with the serious- 
ness due to maturity; respect should be paid to 
them; if one gets larking, something is sure to be 
broken. They are tools, not toys. 

But, to the girl a strung-drill was a novelty, a 
thing beautiful and astonishing, an inexhaustible 
source of wonder and amusement, fraught with 
all manner of latent possibilities. 

To Pul Yun, a good conservative, it was un- 
improvable. The girl’s audacious innovation 
had already outpaced him. There was much that 
was interesting, but nought that was sacred in the 
thing to her; she had amazed her husband by one 
improvement, and was about to astonish him yet 
more. Not that she was aware of what was com- 
ing, no; she was simply uneasy as yet in the 


72 


The Master-Girl 


presence of a tricky piece of mechanism with 
unexplored capacities of use and delight in it. 
She did not sit down to invent, she simply 
started to play. And in this her sex and tempera- 
ment gave her a pull over her comrade. A man 
loses much of his zeal for, if not the power of 
playing soon after sixteen — that is to say, for 
anything that is not a contest or a gamble — the 
so-called sports of manhood, cricket, footer, 
rowing, hunting, and what-not, are usually very 
exhausting, and frequently outrageously expen- 
sive forms of business from which the primary 
idea and essential qualities of play have disap- 
peared. For it is of the very quiddity of play that 
it should be gay, irresponsible, jolly in a word, 
and who will be hardy enough to claim gaiety for 
croquet, or irresponsibility for bridge? 

But most girls and many women can play at 
any time as naturally and spontaneously as a 
child or a kitten. Deh-Yan, fortunately for her- 
self, and for Pill Yun (and for you and me) — 
D6h-Yan, I say, possessed this happy faculty of 
amusing herself with whatever scrap of stone, 
stick, or string came within her reach. These 
strung-drills for example — she was forever stretch- 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 73 

ing, releasing, twanging the things, studying 
their actions and re-actions, wondering at the 
difference in their notes, and had come within a 
little of discovering the germ of the lyre, when — 
well, what she did discover was of more importance 
than music to mankind in the making. 

Pul Yun had been for a month and more carv- 
ing a tom-lynx out of a piece of bone. It was a 
spirited performance, for the man, like many 
of his race, was an artist. At this work Deh-Yan, 
whose faculty lay in another direction, could not 
assist him, and thus, whilst he bent over his work, 
she was trifling with one of the strung-drills tem- 
porarily out of use. She had been trimming the 
hide of the roebuck and was still holding a sharp- 
edged shard of chert in her left hand, the hand 
which also held the taut, bent wood. She was 
plucking and releasing the string, listening to the 
twang of it, and by chance, by the veriest chance, 
the shard pricked her palm. She transferred it 
to her right, the string-hand, and plucked again. 
The loosened cord caught the stone, which flew 
across the cave and struck Pul Yun above the ear, 
drawing blood. 

‘‘Wah! what was that?” he asked without 


74 


The Master-Girl 


temper, and would be shown how she had done 
the trick. 

It was amazing. Deh-Yan whilst amusing 
herself had stumbled upon a property of the bent 
stick and cord which had escaped the dull eyes 
of countless generations of routine-ridden, un- 
imaginative men. 

The new play diverted the girl, and her husband 
through her, albeit neither as yet had caught a 
glimpse of its significance. Indeed, it was three 
days before Deh-Yan (D6h-Yan again!) discovered 
that a stick could be propelled endlong by the 
same agency. 

They had hit upon the root-idea of the bow and 
arrow without knowing it, and like a thousand 
other excellent ideas, this might have perished 
without bearing fruit, but for the occasion which 
revealed its importance, lifting the fortuitous 
combination of two sticks and a string from the 
status of a toy to the dignity of a lethal weapon of 
the first rank. 

[The luck of inventions is very various. We 
know a crabbed octogenarian who in boyhood 
invented a certain tool but could find no one to 
take it up, nor had he means to patent and push 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 75 

it himself. He broke his model in chagrin, and 
sixty years later saw another man rediscover his 
idea and win wealth and fame by his discovery.] 

It will be understood that since the Ghost- 
bear’s attempted escalade the youthful house- 
holders had never felt safe. But suspense and fear 
did not break them down as a modem couple 
under similar conditions might have been broken 
down. Early man was a hunting animal, hunted 
in turn by beasts stronger but less cunning than 
himself. Among the first recollections of our 
ancestors would be that thrilling cry of Wolf! and 
the scurry for shelter of tiny bare feet up rock-faces 
too steep for the blunt claws of the secular enemy 
of childhood. When the shadows lengthened 
the fear of bears grew urgent (as it does to those 
cave-children’s far-removed descendants to-day 
in nurseries lit by electric lights) , a fear sedulously 
instilled by the careful cave-mother, for the shaggy 
urchin who “didn’t care,” and who adventured 
one step too far beyond the circle of firelight, 
never came back. (And left no progeny!) 

We are the lineal heirs of a race of creatures who 
had the very best reasons for dreading the dark, 
hence you shall find among your acquaintance 


76 


The Master-Girl 


tall men of fine physique and cultivated women 
whose almost complete emancipation does not in- 
clude the liberty of walking around their own 
suburban tennis-courts alone after nightfall. 

Pul Yun and D6h-Yan had had their warning; 
thenceforth their fire was never let out, nor at 
night did they both sleep at the same time. 

Meanwhile the l 3 mx was turning out well; 
there were no flaws in the bone, it worked kindly, 
and the tedious process of scraping and under- 
cutting went on steadily. 

“Give me but ten more days to get out of these 
splints and yet another ten to supple the stiff limb, 
D6h-Yan, and then — let thy Ghost-bear lover 
come if he will, I will meet him at the cave- sill 
and stop him there.” 

Then he would expatiate after the manner of 
men upon the extraordinary virtues of his tribal 
Totem, the Sun God. ‘ ‘ Oh, a good totem, a great 
totem, the best of totems.” 

“Yet not so good as mine,” riposted the woman 
with conviction; “thou shalt see my Totem, the 
Little Moon, will have the better of it yet.” She 
knew not what she meant, but for the fun of oppo- 
sition she argued pertinaciously and had the last 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 77 


word whilst testing the capacities of her new toy 
at a mark. Yes, it would send a big skewer the 
whole length of their dwelling and make it stick 
firmly into anything softish. Moreover, and this 
was a thing to take note of, you must shoot from 
the level of the eye and aim point-blank — no 
throwing high as with an assegai. She was learn- 
ing more than she knew. She played at this 
childish game at intervals for some days, gradually 
lengthening the skewers, and attaining a pretty 
creditable proficiency, watched with a good- 
humoured tolerance by her husband, and might, 
in the end, have played her game out and wearied 
of her toy without getting to the bottom of it, had 
not the Thing happened that I am about to tell. 

There came a bitter night with the wind edging 
in and out of the cave-mouth and compelling the 
youngsters to shift the fire and the bed-skins to 
the far end if they would keep a light or sleep at all. 
Pul Yun had taken his spell off, shuddering and 
muttering in sleep, and D^h-Yan, shivering in her 
bison robe, had kept watch. The last silver shard 
of a waning moon hung low over the forest spires 
south-eastward, the cave-woman made silent 
obeisance to the god of her private orisons, bending 


78 


The Master-Girl 


low and striking the rock floor with her forehead. 
“Little Moon! — be good to my man — and to 
me!’' She grovelled prone, and as she did so 
something snapped beneath her; it was one of her 
assegais. She raised it and examined it in the 
dim light, good enough for a woman of a race which 
still saw well enough in the dark. The mischief 
was done, the thin tapering shaft had parted at 
a knot-hole, a flaw in the wood selected by its 
maker, the loutish Gow-Loo. The keen, leaf- 
shaped chert head of the weapon had less than an 
arm’s length of shaft behind it, and until re- 
mounted was useless as a throwing-spear. 

Pul Yun sat up at the sound, asked and was told 
its cause, and scolded his wife for her carelessness. 
She excused herself, and even as they spoke, queru- 
lously as sleepy folk may be excused for speaking 
who are miserably cold and are talking down a 
blusterous wind (and perhaps too loudly for a 
hunted folk), the Terror was upon them! 

There, upon the sill-platform beyond the cave’s 
mouth, and disregarding the dull ash of a dying 
fire let down because the night was over, stood the 
great Ghost-bear, huge and hairy, terrible, black 
against the first pallor of the dawn, obliterating 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 79 

D^h-Yan’s Totem, nullifying and intercepting the 
answer to her prayer. 

Escape was none ; nor was resistance reasonably 
possible. The enemy was already within their 
defences; had made good his footing; yet Pul Yun 
without a word of reproach to the woman whose 
ear had for once been at fault, gripped his axe and 
sat square with clenched teeth and narrowed 
nostrils. No moan escaped him, his time had 
come; he would shew his squaw how a Sun-disc 
brave could take his death. 

The girl’s heart seemed to swell upwards until 
it filled her body, and thrust against her throat. 
She did not cower, or shriek, or cover her eyes, but 
crouched for a spring — if such might be possible; 
she would give away no fraction of a chance. Her 
man was doomed; nothing that she could do, 
nothing that ten men in her place could have done, 
would save him. But, life is very, very sweet — 
What of herself? Could she, or could she not, slip 
past and escape ? Yes, it was possible. She was 
wearing kilt and kaross, she slipped out of both 
and stood nude and slippery, agile as an eel. 
Her garments she proposed to toss in the 
bear’s face, then to throw her bison robe over 


8o 


The Master-Girl 


his head and to dart past him whilst momen- 
tarily entangled. 

''And leave your man — the loveliest, kindest, 
cleverest, wisest, best creature that ever lived — to this 
Ghost of the silly Saw-Kimo to he chawed and 
mumbled alive? To have the bone that is almost 
knit cracked and sucked . . . whilst you run 
away ? ’ ’ 

Something within the woman, not recognisably 
herself, put this very pertinent question. Who 
was the speaker? — Unquestionably it was the 
Totem, the Little Moon of her prayers, so she 
persisted to her dying day. The innate woman- 
hood of the Master-Girl, that passionate self- 
devotion, self-immolation, of which the sex in 
every land and under every manner of garb and 
rite has proved itself capable,^ arose and strove. 
No, she would not go forth safe, alone and humbled 
she would die with her man, for her man, indeed, 
for this matter should be taken fighting. 

Tossing her clothing behind her, she stooped 

1 A capacity independent of religious sanctions and of 
future hopes. What celestial reward did Eucharis expect, 
the freedwoman of “light life,” whose constancy on behalf of 
her friend, the falsely-accused Octavia, exhausted the infernal 
ingenuities of Nero? 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 8i 


and groped right and left, snatching for spears, 
axes, anything in the darkness. 

When she looked again the huge beast had 
shuffled sidelong past the hot ashes, and was 
standing over her husband. Pul Yun had thrown 
back the hand that held the axe for one last 
stroke. The bear, just beyond reach, certain of 
his meal, and perhaps not particularly hungry, 
or, it may be, disposed, as are all beasts of prey, 
to play with his victim, snarled joyously and 
half -arose upon his broad haunches, hanging a vast 
bestial head over the seated man, its pestiferous 
darkness imperfectly lit by the green glitter of an 
eye. 

Exactly over the brute’s head, and between his 
round ears, D6h-Yan caught sight of that pale, 
thin sickle of moon, her moon, her people’s god 
and hers ! Her right hand held the broken 
assegai, her left the longest strung-drill (she had 
snatched it from the floor in mistake for a spear) . 
There was no time to seek another weapon; the 
spears, as she now remembered, lay between Pul 
Yun and the Ghost-bear. If there was to be 
fighting she must fight with this toy, nought 
else. 


6 


82 


The Master-Girl 


With an almost bursting heart she fitted the 
stump of that broken assegai to the string — I have 
said it had parted at a knot ; the knot-hole provided 
a natural and quite effective nock. The girl drew 
suddenly, hugely, and with the strength of her 
despair, until the chert head lay upon her thumb ; 
she aimed at that green eye and loosed with a cry, 
“Moon, help me!” The cave hummed to the 
twang of the cord, the green light of the eye went 
out. There was a reverberating, snarling roar, 
the enemy, instead of charging, backed, shaking 
his head in a horrid agony, and as he reached the 
sill, having lost his marks, reared and, clawing his 
mask with both paws, fell over the edge backwards 
— down — and down! 

Open-mouthed, incredulous, the youngsters 
listened for the rasp of claws and the sounds of a 
re-ascent. Instead, after a perceptible interval, 
came a dull, pounding crash. He had gone to 
the bottom, taken the full fall, a hundred feet or 
more. There was moaning, fainter and more 
faint. Silence came before daylight showed them 
the extent of their deliverance and their abound- 
ing, enormous wealth. 

There at the foot of the cliff lay the dead mon- 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 83 


ster, huddled and broken and burst ! Incredible — 
but true. 

Pul Yun had held D^h-Yan in his arms for a 
minute which seemed an hour; neither had spoken 
whilst the Ghost-bear’s dying was going on, and 
those gruesome sounds came up from below. For 
once D^h-Yan’s nerve had failed. She had clung 
to her husband, dumbly shuddering, conscious of 
what she still possessed and had so nearly, nearly 
lost. Of her own escape she was thinking not at 
all, nor of her amazing feat — at present. 

Pul Yun was the first to pull himself together. 
As a conservative he felt that the hour might not 
pass without the ritual proper to the occasion, 
the hallalai sanctioned by custom and use. So 
he sang the Bear-Song, an ancient chanty which 
had come down from the youth of his tribe ; replete 
with absurd boasting, insults to the slain, and 
gastronomic anticipations ; but, even whilst trolling 
it out upon the frosty air and watching his hot 
breath smoke in the red dawn, he felt less than 
himself, and knew well who by right should have 
been celebrating the victory. (Only, who ever 
heard of a squaw singing the Bear-Song ?) He had 
not borne himself ill, as he knew; but, had not 


84 


The Master-Girl 


another interposed, this ogre had been cracking 
his marrow-bones by this time. 

Meanwhile, Deh-Y^, being intensely practical, 
was hardly giving her husband’s music the applause 
and critical attention which he may have thought 
due to it. Hungry and cold as she was she must 
set to work ere the great unwieldy carcass should 
have stiffened, and labouring as she had never 
laboured in her life, heaved, thrust, wrenched and 
tugged until the hide came away. During this 
maenadic spasm of toil I am bound to confess that 
my heroine worked stark naked despite the cold, 
and neither ate nor drank save for the morsels of 
raw bear-meat with which she filled a distended 
cheek at intervals. But Deh-Y^, though a 
savage, was no fool. She knew, none better, that 
the smell of so much spilt blood would bring upon 
the scene eagle and lammergeier, buzzard and 
raven, and what she feared more, wolverene, 
lynx, wolf, and she knew not what beside, possibly 
man ! Whilst it lay there it was a menace to her- 
self and to her husband ; but, promptly and prop- 
erly dealt with, it was wealth and food and safety 
for the remainder of the winter. 

The hide when off proved an unhandy burden, 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 85 


made still more massive by its accumulations of 
frozen blood and snow. Two whole deerskins 
went in thongs before a cord was knotted by which 
she, Pul Yun assisting, drew the load up the cliff 
to the cave. Nor was the girl even then content 
with her day's work, but ere the short winter's 
day closed, had lit fires on three sides of the carcass 
and begun to strip the bones. 

The salving of that bear's-meat was a four-days' 
poem. By the fifth evening the youngsters were 
victualled for the rest of the winter, and Ddh-Yan 
had not one thumb-nail's breadth of cutting-edge 
upon the last of her chert flakes. She was also 
dead beat. 

The whole of the sixth day and the following 
night the girl slept the deep, dreamless sleep of a 
healthy organism wearied out, watched by Pul 
Yun, who had seen to it that she had gorged 
herself to repletion before lying down, and who had 
himself rubbed her swollen joints vigorously with 
fat, and who watched over her whilst she slept 
beneath the vast hairy spoil of her twice-dead 
lover. 

“Saw-Kimo," jeered the young brave during 
the long chilly night watches, “this is the third 


86 


The Master-Girl 


time thou hast bid for my woman. She was not 
for thee, or thy Little Moons. She is mine ! mine ! 
— I tell thee! — Was there ever such a woman? — 
never! I have seen two bears die in my time on 
the other side of the ranges, but they were brown 
bears, and young bears at that, yet they died 
within a ring of as many braves as they (or thou) 
had claws upon their feet. It took the whole 
strength of a war-party to bring either of them to 
bay and keep them there. We brought two braves 
who did not go home with us. One we buried 
to each bear. And, look thou at thy business, O 
Saw-Kimo (if that be thy name), and whimper 
for shame, thou who died at one stroke, and that 
from the hand of a squaw — of a girl! a stroke in 
the eye of thee; in the brain of thee. Such a 
stroke! And thou a cave grizzly! Was there 
ever such a woman ? ” 

So Pul Yun: for the glory of the feat had got 
upon his imagination. The more he sang of it, 
the less he understood it. You must remember 
that his knowledge of how the thing had been done 
was all by hearsay. The bolt had been discharged 
from behind him, and owing to the darkness of the 
cave, he had not watched it home; D6h-Yan’s 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 87 


description of the wound, and of the chert assegai- 
head still enfixed in the eye-socket, was un- 
satisfying. He must see for himself, some day, 
soon — yes, at once — the great stripped skull which 
lay a hundred feet beneath him. And whilst he 
pondered a certain familiar sound reached his ears 
from the foot of the cliff ; it was the cracking of a 
bone. Some furry scavenger of the forest had been 
drawn to the carcass and would not be long with- 
out competitors. The man must risk something. 
He cast loose his bandages and splints, crawled to 
the sill, and hurled stone after stone upon the 
marauder. Nor did his leg suffer. The bone 
had knit. 

The scraping, greasing, and suppling of that 
immense hide was a laborious business, but a 
labour of love for Deh-Yan, whose heart was both 
big and high within her. There was no tribal 
record, no legend even, of any woman having 
killed a bear in single fight. Yet she held her 
tongue, and silently grew in moral stature. 

Pul Yun might sing about his wife’s prowess, 
but he was not to be convinced of the superiority, 
or even of the use, of her new weapon. He was a 
spearman: as a spearman, an expert with the 


88 


The Master-Girl 


assegai, he had won the deputy-chieftainship, the 
War-Chieftainship, of his tribe. What was 
possible with the spear he could do; but this 
fiddling with a strung-drill was too novel, too 
womanish, too uncertain as yet. He would have 
none of it. 

The girl, already convinced and sanguine, 
wisely desisted from argument. By help of the 
cord the massive skull was hauled up from below 
to tell its tale to deaf ears, to be admired, turned 
over, its death-wound marvelled at, and its lesson 
ignored. The man set himself to dig out the 
enormous white fangs. He also detached those 
twenty black curving claws, arranged, studied, and 
pored over them, watched by Deh-Yan. She 
knew by intuition what was passing in his mind 
and waited. This was the critical, the dangerous 
point of their married life. 

Who was to wear those teeth? those claws? 

He put the question from him (she had not raised 
it) ; it would wait, the trophies were not ready for 
wearing as yet, they must be drilled before they 
could be strung. Deh-Yan saw that her husband 
needed something but was too sulky to ask, and by 
a real intuition fetched him the lengths of elder 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 89 

which he required for this new drilling and left 
him to his work, setting herself to study the 
properties of her new weapon. There was nothing 
to take her afield, stacks of frozen bear-meat 
blocked the cave, she could experiment at her 
leisure, and had conquered some of the initial 
difficulties before her man, glumly busy up above, 
knew anything about them. 

Thus, the girl found that assegai-heads were too 
heavy, and assegai-shafts too stout for successful 
shooting; terrible at point-blank range, at any- 
thing over twenty strides they wobbled and 
swerved and fell short, and D^h-Yan the practical 
argued, and argued rightly, that unless her shafts 
flew farther and straighter and bit deeper than a 
thrown assegai, she had better keep to the ortho- 
dox method. She needed chert or flint to make for 
her arrows smaller and lighter heads, but neither 
chert nor flint was to be found in that valley, nor 
was it possible for her to adventure the week’s 
journey down- stream to the chalk cliff which was 
the only source known to her of the tribe’s cutting- 
tools. But, womanlike, she remembered her 
needles, and in default of chert fell to experiment- 
ing with bone tips attached to lighter shafts by 


90 


The Master-Girl 


rosin and sinew, the hafting method of the Little 
Moons. She succeeded from the first attempt, 
settling after many trials to a shaft as long as her 
own arm, made herself ten upon this pattern, and 
practised sedulously. Skill came apace, far more 
quickly to this tense-sinewed, one-ideaed savage 
woman than it would come to a modem; and at 
the end of three days’ constant archery she found 
herself able to put all ten arrows into a small circle 
marked out upon a snow-bank at full assegai- 
range. Beyond this range her missiles disappointed 
her, they still wobbled. As a practical spear- 
thrower she knew what was lacking — there was no 
spin upon them. How could this be remedied? 
This question lay down with her at night and 
arose with her in the morning. She besought her 
Totem for wisdom, but got never a sign. A 
sacrifice was needed; she vowed to the Moon the 
first-fruits of her bow, and greatly daring, ad- 
ventured out into the wintry forest armed with her 
new weapon and nought else. What would the 
God send (the moon is a man to the savage) — 
fur or feather? A little hazel-grouse trotted out 
into the glade ; the shot was a difficult one, impos- 
sible with spear or throwing- stick, owing to over- 


Hard Need, Mother of Invention 91 

hanging boughs, but the girl prayed as she drew 
and brought it off. Her heart filled with grati- 
tude, her Totem was still watching over her for 
good. This should be a whole-burnt offering; a 
few feathers alone would she retain as her own 
share of the spoils, the first that ever fell to her 
bow (the Ghost-bear always excepted) . 

Whilst walking cave- ward, these curving flight- 
feathers in hand, something in their curvature, 
their shapes, aroused her superstition. ''Moon- 
feather,'' she whispered, and attached one of them 
to one of her shafts. The feather was narrow, stiff, 
and strongly curved, it refused to lie along the 
shaft, but must needs curl somewhat around it 
when bound thereto by small sinews at either end. 
Deh-Yan’s first shot with it at her snow-bank 
target flooded her bosom with adoring gratitude, 
for here was the thing she had sought and prayed 
for — the shaft spun as it flew! Again and again 
she essayed shots at increasing ranges and still the 
wonder persisted; at fifty, yes, and at sixty paces 
the shaft flew straight, swerving neither to left 
nor right. All her shafts were presently feathered, 
and, since the principle eluded her, and some 
behaved better than others, she must practise 


92 


The Master-Girl 


daily, watch, consider, and think, and within a 
while she came to a practical conclusion, to closely 
imitate the feathering of those which spun the 
best. 


CHAPTER V 


THE TESTING OF THE NEW THING 

A ND now there was gloom in the household. 

Pul Yun was gaining strength daily and as 
irritable as your convalescent is permitted to be. 
His leg was not yet sound enough, or supple enough 
to attempt the descent of the face, for the knee- 
joint creaked from its six weeks of disuse ; on the 
other hand, it could not get enough of play within 
the limits of the cave. His nerves excited him, his 
temper was less even than when he was helpless, 
and, worst of all, his conscience would not let him 
be. 

D^h-Yan put up with her man’s petulant out- 
breaks and slaved for him harder than ever. A 
diet of dark bear-meat — solid bear-meat daily and 
twice a day, although admirably suited to keep up 
bodily warmth, is hard upon the liver unless 
regulated by abundant exercise, which in the 
case of her husband was out of the question. She 
93 


94 


The Master-Girl 


cast about for something lighter, but game was 
getting scarce in the immediate neighbourhood of 
the cave, or indeed in the glen itself. She had 
hunted it too closely and too long; it was the 
depth of winter in the mountains, migratory life 
had long since left for the lower levels, resident life 
was scanty. D^h-Yan betook herself to trapping. 
A bird of some kind her man should have. 

Pul Yun, peering moodily from his cave plat- 
form, watched her bending over a trap far below 
and a long way off. The cackle of a chough came 
up clearly through the cold air, a danger-signal, 
and it struck h’m as singular that the bird should 
be calling so far from the woman, for as a rule they 
ignored her movements unless she were within, say, 
a hundred paces, yet he put the matter from him ; 
no dream had given him prescience of impending 
danger. 

The girl, busied at her work, crouched beside 
her gin, her deerskin quiver upon her shoulder, 
her bow laid beside her hand. The man was 
annoyed at the sight, he distrusted this new- 
fangled plaything of hers; why could she not carry 
spears as he would have done, as he was going to 
do in a week or so? Everything she did, or failed 


The Testing of the New Thing 95 

to do, had power to annoy the poor fellow now. 
That she bore with him so quietly was an offence 
in itself. Had she answered him back, had she met 
him half-way in the quarrel which he had been pro- 
voking for a week past, he would have taken such 
an attitude in good part. That is to say, he would 
have found it natural and treated it naturally, 
beaten her, to wit, as every savage man has ever 
done since the male subjugated the female. 

But D6h-Yan’s gentle, unselfish reserve, and 
ever perpetual activities on his behalf, gave him 
never an opening. 

So he watched her moodily, jealously — come, 
the secret is out at last, we have a name for the 
complaint. 

This is one of the primitive passions. It is one 
which we share with, or inherit from, the brutes. 
A cat, a lap-dog, a parrot will sicken of jealousy. 
Children, savages, uneducated people, our semi- 
educated fellow-citizens (our new masters), are 
subject to severe and protracted fits of this tor- 
turing disease. We have known a working man, 
middle-aged, of failing health, and with a sickly 
wife and young family to support, to throw up a 
foreman’s post of twenty-eight shillings the week 


96 


The Master-Girl 


and begin life again upon seventeen as a common 
labourer, from sheer jealousy of one of the gang 
under him whom he could not induce his firm to 
discharge without a reason. 

Women are more liable to the malady than men 
because they have, upon the whole, less distraction 
for their minds. A man can escape from the 
proximity of his enemy (once possibly his friend) : 
he can steep his mind in business, in politics, in 
literature, in sport. A woman has her rival ever 
at her elbow, in her kitchen, in the nursery, in 
the schoolroom, or next door. 

In the case of poor Pul Yun the position was 
reversed. It was he who, with hardening muscles 
and strengthening passion, was debarred from 
healthy and adequate physical exercise, and was 
fain to eat his heart in bitterness of spirit, with an 
accusing conscience ever at his elbow, a house- 
mate for which he had no name, for the Thing, like 
many other things, rheumatism, gravity, panic- 
terror, malaria, etc., although maleficent, had not 
yet been separated, personified, and named. 

Picture him overlooking with the beady, deep- 
set, far-sighted eyes of the savage, like an eagle 
from his eyrie, the doings of his jealously loved 


The Testing of the New Thing 97 

squaw a half-mile away and three hundred feet 
below. 

There, she had set that gin, and half arose, her 
chert-knife in one hand, her bow in the other. 
Sudden as the pounce of a lynx (and nothing in 
nature save the stroke of a snake can be swifter) , 
a man leapt upon her from the scrub. Pul Yun 
caught his breath, for the enemy had her by the 
kaross and must have borne her down had not 
his foot caught in a trailing bough of pumilus. As 
it was, it was the nearest thing in the world, for as 
he stumbled, still fast to her, the skewer at her 
throat snapped, he reeled back with the kaross, the 
woman was free. He was at her again, but she 
doubled under his tossed-up arm, striking back 
and up as she did so and getting him in the arm-pit 
as her husband thought. By some means she was 
at liberty, off and away; not along the glade, but 
winding swift and puzzlingly amid the tangling 
scrub of which she knew every game-track by 
heart. This was the saving of her, as Pul Yun 
saw, and breathed again, for two other hunters 
now upsprang from beside the path which they had 
anticipated her flying feet would follow. These 
seemed for a moment somewhat out of it, for their 


7 


98 


The Master-Girl 


quarry had doubled back and secured a lead, but 
they were hardened braves in the pink of condition, 
winter-hunters who seemed to know the valley, 
and once clear of that patch of scrub what would 
happen? 

There is but one thing that can happen when an 
unarmed woman is set upon by three armed men, 
unless, indeed, she be helped. But how was 
Deh-Yan to be helped? — and by whom? By 
himself only ! He smote his stiff knee and yelped 
a short and very bitter laugh. Yes, the girl must 
come to him for help at the last. 

Meanwhile she was playing the game, running 
her ring about the thicket, as a vixen does when 
roused. There was just the off-chance that she 
might throw her pursuers out, and get back to her 
earth unviewed. But, with three men (and such 
men), it was the poorest of chances, and she was 
incurring the most outrageous risks. She had 
boasted somewhat to him of her speed, and he had 
believed that she was fleet for a woman, but what 
woman, or what man for the matter of that, could 
stand up before three? She was heading down- 
glen when he lost sight of the chase, and every 
step would have to be retraced, and the double 


The Testing of the New Thing 99 

made in face of a runner-up pressing her for all 
he was worth, and flankers running wide to cut 
her off when she turned. 

He threw himself upon the cave floor and 
gnawed his knuckles in impotent chagrin. 

She should not have turned. She should have 
headed straight for him at once. They would have 
stood out the siege together, and died together, for 
that was what it would have come to, as he saw 
too clearly. 

As for his wife making a successful stand any- 
where or under any circumstances, and fighting it 
out with that new Thing of hers, the idea never 
occurred to him once during the long hours of his 
lonely vigil. 

The shadows of the winter’s day lengthened. 
The imprisoned man had given up hope. His 
wife did not come, would never come to him again. 
The husband’s heart grew heavy with the sorrow 
which settles down upon the watcher whose 
anxieties are over at last, whom the worst has 
befallen. 

For himself he did not particularly care. He 
had no fear that she would give him away under 
torture. Deh-Yan would be staunch to the last, 


lOO 


The Master-Girl 


of that he was assured, doing her justice now that 
she was gone. He had stores enough for another 
four months, and long before that would be as 
sound a man again as ever he was. But this cave 
would be a hateful place without his squaw. 
Nor could he face the thought of returning to his 
tribe without her, empty-handed, with nothing 
to show for his winter’s hunting. This was a 
humiliation not to be borne, the sneering enquiries 
of his cousin and rival, the wonder of his fellow- 
braves, the eyes of the women. No wife and no 
scalps ? 

Whether besieged or no. Pul Yun would stay 
back and avenge her. What was she worth in 
Little Moon lives? He held up all his ten fingers 
and solemnly gloomed upon them. Ten should die 
for her — if he lived — not less. So the night 
wore. 

Then a stick cracked below in the darkness, and 
her signal, the shrill whistle of the marmot, rang 
out. His heart leapt, he gripped his axe and a 
stone for a down-throw; she would be hard pressed 
to a surety, but why did the fool-creature make 
such a noise? ’Twas madness! 

He hirpled to the lip of the rock platform and 


lOI 


The Testing of the New Thing 

craned over, peering down into the impenetrable 
dusk below, ready for action, listening, eye, ear, 
and nostril at stretch for news of the whereabouts 
of his foes. But the only sounds were the scrape 
of his squaw’s moccasins and her hardly-taken 
breaths. How heavily she climbed! Was she 
wounded? She did not reply to his low-spoken 
questions. She was coming nearer, nearer; his 
eyes, accustomed to seeing in the worst of lights, 
could make out her bare un bandaged head and 
shoulders, her arms too; there seemed little the 
matter with what of her he could see. Her kaross 
was gone, he had seen it go, she was still encum- 
bered with that silly bag of arrows, and the big 
bow-drill hampered her climbing. Drawing her 
breath in gasps, she reached the sill of the cave, 
crawled in, and sat mutely panting, her eyes 
shining glassily in her head. She seemed un- 
harmed; she was unharmed; it was wonderful — 
amazing! Now, what had happened? Why could 
not the creature speak? “What of the chase, 
Deh-Yan?” 

Still mute and with an open mouth drawn up 
from the teeth with the muscular contraction of 
extreme toil, she unrolled and laid out before him 


102 


The Master-Girl 


in the dusk, one — two — three bloody scalps 
each with the top-knot of a brave, raw, fresh- 
stripped. 

Pul Yun caught his breath in with a harsh cry, 
“ Wah! — Whatf — Howf — Where? ” but the woman 
squatting over her spoils did not answer. She 
had reached her farthest. She swayed, she leaned, 
she collapsed, she tumbled forward almost into his 
arms. 

The man drew the bearskin over her as she lay 
shuddering, whimpering. He marvelled to hear 
her long-drawn sobbing in the darkness. This 
was new indeed; never had he known her to weep. 
Presently she relaxed and slept. He watched her 
slumber, gnawing a tortured lip, incredulous and 
convinced, exulting and humiliated, adoring and 
furiously jealous by fits. What would come out 
of this? ’T was glorious! But Twas absurdly dis- 
concerting 1 Wonderful, no doubt, past whooping, 
but not to be put up with! 

At midnight she awoke with a start, sighed once, 
rubbed her eyes, put back her hair, pulled herself 
together, and was a new creature. Ashamed of 
her weakness, she silently got to her feet, made up 
the fire, and cooked food for both. 


The Testing of the New Thing 103 

Pul Yun watched her; would give her time; 
when she had eaten forth it came. 

She had led her pursuers over a long and difficult 
line, hoping to throw them out, but Go w- Loo, 
though less fleet than she, was not to be shaken off ; 
in fact he had pressed her hard and fired thrice as 
the leading greyhound fires at his hare, whilst 
the others, running to point, had headed off her 
attempts at doubling. The men were in training, 
knew the country, and thought to wear her down 
by sprinting in succession. Again, and yet again, 
had her turn of speed been the saving of her. But 
she was getting a long way down the glen and the 
daylight held. It would see her out unless she 
changed her tactics ; in a little while she would be 
out of her country and (for aught that she knew) 
in theirs, then the game would be up. 

So, tightening her throat, she had made up her 
mind, and doubled right-handedly, close across the 
line of Low-Mah, whom she believed she had hurt, 
taking the risk of his assegai at short range. Her 
judgment justified itself when the hunter threw 
short with a gasp and she slipped past him and 
made her point, a salient rock-face that she knew, 
steep, narrow, where she could neither be over- 


104 


The Master-Girl 


looked nor outflanked. There, at more than a very 
tall spruce-tree's height from the last stones of the 
scree below her, she had chosen her ledge and 
stood at bay, regulating her breath and schooling 
her swimming head for the final tussle. 

“ I think those rocks were not wholly new ground 
to thee,” suggested the listener. 

“ I had been up there before — ^three years back, 
when I was a girl. Our old men call them ‘ The 
Two Fangs,' but the tribe has renamed them; they 
are ‘The Hungry Boys' since — since something 
happened there which is not good to speak about.” 
She shot a glance over her shoulder to make sure 
that The Dead were not listening. “ Three of our 
unproved lads, two half-growns and a child, 
whilst berrying were driven up that cleft by a 
wolf. They were not found in time. The two 
boys must have eaten the little one. Then, who 
knows? — perhaps they fought with knives. They 
were found up there, dead, — with the bones.” 

“Ugh! not a clean place after dark. Surely 
your children went wide of it in all lights. How 
then ?'' 

“ The boys I played with dared me. Not one 
of them would do it. — There was a gnawed 


The Testing of the New Thing 105 

finger-bone still in a crevice. — So I knew my 
footholds to-day.” 

Pul Yun laid his hand upon his mouth, and 
perused this wife of his in the flicker of the brands. 
There was nothing in this by-incident to excite 
surprise — a piteous tragedy — ^the coarse woof of 
savage life is occasionally shot by such a crimson 
warp. His mental vision was busy with this 
woman’s adventure, picturing the tall, splintered 
aiguille, springing sheer from its scree, cleft by 
its one narrow chemin^e leading to its one broad 
platform ledge so far aloft there. Yes, he had 
realised the mise-en-scbne , and could follow the 
woman’s weary voice carrying on her story, and 
could accompany her point by point. 

The pursuers had seen that she was at the top of 
a blind couloir from which was no escape upward. 
Saw too that the overhang protected her from 
anything sent down from above. Saw too that 
the rock was absolutely sound, and that she had 
nothing to throw (a point in their favour) . 

Then, since daylight was waning, they deter- 
mined to put the thing through. Their camp, dogs 
(‘'good wolves”), karosses, and sleeping-robes 
were hours away. There was neither fuel nor 


io6 


The Master-Girl 


water upon that scree beneath the cliff. After 
all, strong runner as she was, this was only a girl — 
unarmed, and probably spent. 

Up came the leading couple, boldly and close 
together, and only when fully committed to the 
business, recognised the trap. 

The girl, who had by this time recovered her 
wind, held her fire until the leading climber’s top- 
knot showed twenty feet below her ledge. She 
knew him for Gow-Loo ; he turned his head, saw 
her leaning above him, handling the absurd bent 
stick which she had carried throughout the run, 
and, getting his breath, made her a mock offer of 
marriage, the same bitter little jeer that he had 
cast after her thrice during the chase. As he 
made it, he laid his head back upon his shoulder 
the better to leer at his helpless victim, now safely 
under his hand, and — even as he bared his dog- 
tooth, a little short, light assegai was sticking 
deeply beneath his ear. The stricken man plucked 
hard at the shaft with one hand, but the bone head 
was barbed and he could not draw it. He uttered 
no cry, possibly from shame, more probably from 
inability to articulate, and his fellow-climber, 
Pongu, just below him in the chemin^e, getting no 


The Testing of the New Thing 107 

reply from him, and craning out to learn why his 
leader had stopped, knew not what had happened 
before a second shaft was driven hard and deep 
between collar-bone and shoulder-blade into his 
own lung, which brought him, too, to a stand, 
with his mouth and nose full of blood. 

Each man knew that he was hard hit, but knew 
not of the other’s hurt; each felt the immediate 
need of getting down, but neither could speak, 
nor warn the man below him to vacate the foot- 
holds. To give ground to a young squaw was too 
bitter; both held on grimly, doggedly, and too long. 

Low-Mah, the lowest, came up the cleft halt- 
ingly, crippled by that stab in the arm-pit that 
we know of, and which he had known for hours 
past to his bitter cost. The point of the Master- 
Girl’s knife, whilst making a quite inconsiderable 
puncture, had touched one of the nerves of the 
brachial plexus; his right arm felt heavy and 
numb and was giving him exquisite agony, which 
he was bearing as mutely as a wolf. He knew by 
trial that he could not throw, but thought he could 
climb. His honour was engaged. To be known 
henceforth as the warrior who was lamed by a 
squaw? Not he! 


io8 


The Master-Girl 


He saw that the leaders had stopped, and with- 
out visible cause, although Pongu, two spears* 
lengths above him, was coughing fast and hard. 
He could not see their wounds, or the weapons 
which had caused them, but the patter of falling 
blood from the severed artery in Gow- Loo’s throat 
warned him of something amiss. Then an assegai 
clipped past his own ear very close. Phew! what 
was this? Whence had this she-lynx weapons? 
Was this an old haunt of hers? and had she led 
them up this cleft to spear them with javelins 
stored for the occasion? His position, almost 
exactly beneath his leaders, had its advantages; 
their bodies screened him; he offered the smallest 
of marks — but (a fear suddenly gripped him, 
bred by the silence and immobility of those 
leaders) what if one of them should fall? He 
hailed them by name, but elicited no reply. “I 
must get from under them while I may,” thought 
he, and attempted a traverse, a ticklish piece of 
work for a man so hampered. If he could but 
escape from this cheminie, this death-trap, and 
win around the buttress to the left, he would, as 
he reckoned, be under cover. He made the move 
and not a moment too soon. Why, oh why, had 


The Testing of the New Thing 109 

not one or the other of his mates fought his way 
up within swing of a tomahawk? — there is no 
throwing to be done while scaling a vertical 
fissure. Tomahawk, indeed! Gow-Loo, being by 
this time in exceeding evil case, and growing blind 
and weak, dropped his hatchet, and a moment la- 
ter, with never a cry of warning, let go altogether ; 
his knees buckled, his body bent, and down he 
came upon Pongu and took him to the bottom 
with him. There they lay, their life’s business 
accomplished, the matter disposed of so far as 
they were concerned. 

Then Low-Mah, for almost the first time in his 
life, knew fear. Yet it no more unnerved him than 
the proximity of the leading hound relaxes the 
sinews of a failing fox. Desperately, yet cau- 
tiously, he wrought to put that salient overhang of 
cliff between him and the Master-Girl; it was but 
a matter of a spear’s length; if he gained it he 
were safe. He had paused in his climb — as who 
would not ? — when the bodies of his friends rushed 
down past him; quickly he withdrew his eyes from 
them where they lay ; to look too long upon such a 
sight does a climber no good, and in another step 
he had won shelter and comparative safety, when — 


no 


The Master-Girl 


how say it? — ^his left arm, the one upon which he 
chiefly depended, was pinned down to its shoulder 
by a small, but astonishingly hard-thrown assegai ! 
Oh the pang of it! — and the ignominy of being 
twice maimed and held up by a squaw! He 
gnashed his teeth hearing the clear triumphant 
laugh of the Master-Girl above him, and then in 
a wink that laugh had changed to a thrilling, 
brief scream, and something light came bounding 
down the fissure, the bent stick the girl had held 
in hand when she crossed him. He must glance 
up, knowing his wound, but not yet understanding 
his luck, nor perceiving that his enemy was already 
disarmed, and saw that enemy in a very close 
place, for she, whilst laughing, had been overcome 
by one of those revulsions which lie in wait for 
the overstrung. Her desperate exertions, her 
desperate risk, followed by such unimaginable 
success, had shaken her; she had leaned too far 
over watching the effect of her shaft, and had 
almost followed it. 

“And, O husband” (let the Master-Girl tell 
the adventure in her own words), “then, for the 
second time, I so nearly gave up! The first time 
was when Gow-Loo made his last sprint for me. 


Ill 


The Testing of the New Thing 

My heart seemed bursting, my legs shook as I 
raced. He got within throw. — I felt all up my 
back what was coming. ‘ This is the end,' I thought 
— but his hatchet struck my quiver. Then I took 
fresh heart, I remembered thee. ‘ My man shall 
not starve like a sick badger in his earth. Little 
Moon, help my man,' I prayed! and new strength 
came to my legs, and Gow-Loo dropped back 
blown. It was after that that I doubled and all 
came right. But now, for the second time, I 
thought all was over. I had overbalanced, I 
stumbled, I let fall my bow and my last arrow, 
and came down twice my height, scrambling, and 
clutching hard. When I stopped and my eyes 
cleared I was in a bad place and could find no 
footholds for ever so long. But, again I thought 
of thee, and again I cried to my Totem, and lo, 
at once my right foot was on something, and I was 
safe.’’ 

“Safe!” echoed Pul Yun hoarsely, catching his 
breath, “ with all thy weapons at the foot of the 
cliff, and that half-crippled wolf between thee and 
them? Was there no scraping past him?” 

“ It was not to be done. He was well placed 
astride the outer angle of the buttress with both 


II2 


The Master-Girl 


feet firm; but the only holds for getting down 
that chemin^e lay close under his hand, and he 
knew it. I worked down to within my length of 
him, but it would not do. I had to return to my 
ledge and wait.’’ 

“And he?” 

“ He made mouths at me and said all the worst 
that he knew. No, I will not tell thee what he 
said. This is his scalp, is not that enough? ” 
“Nay, but I will hear. What said he ? ” 

“ First he fixed his eyes upon mine and would 
have charmed me down, and when that would not 
serve, he must show me point by point what must 
be the end; this hold, and that hold, and then the 
one next to him; and that, as I must needs come 
down feet foremost, he would set his hand or his 
teeth in me for he was too badly hurt to get down 
himself. And it was all ‘ Come down to me, my little 
Love, and thou and I will go gently to the bottom 
together, and thou shalt sleep long {Oh long!) and 
soundly {very soundly) in my arms I ’ ” 

“Eh, but he said that?'' blurted the husband. 
“ Which didst say was his scalp?” 

“What matter? — nay, thou must not spoil it! 
It was almost the last thing he did say. Oh but 


The Testing of the New Thing 113 

we were thirsty, he and I! I sucked the rock! — 
and cold — we were cold; I could see him shaking. 
Is he cold now, dost thou think? I hope he is 
very, very cold.’' 

“And then?” asked the husband, recovering 
himself, and prosaically detached from the pos- 
sible sensations of a dead enemy, but Deh-Yan 
paused. 

Yes, what then? — for there seemed no way out 
of this stalemate. The man might cling on there 
until the woman above him perished of the night’s 
wind-frost, of exhaustion, or thirst, or made some 
despairing attempt and met her death so. 

But, what of the other, the brute denizens of 
the glen ? — ^The rapid movement of a chase hath a 
stimulating influence upon whatever is within 
sight or hearing. Have we not seen the apparition 
of a pack of hounds in full cry set a whole country- 
side in motion ? horses at grass, calves, colts, sows, 
pigs of all sizes breaking bounds, yea, the heavy- 
footed Wessex labourer, school-children, and the 
village postman upon his rounds, swept out of 
their several orbits and drawn into the tail of the 
passing comet ? 

Yes, these four racing figures had been seen, and 


8 


The Master-Girl 


114 

noted, and followed as far as appetite prompted 
or means of progression allowed. A lean, lone 
wolf with a festering fore-pad struck the trail 
and limped on at a steady, questing, three-legged 
trot, in hopes that the end of the matter might 
provide something toothsome. The rapid move- 
ments of parties of men had been known to have 
such an effect even at that time (as since) . 

But the chief watchers and followers had been 
the fowls of the air. 

Every mountain peak had then, and many have 
still, a planetary system of birds of prey. In clear 
weather these swing in circles at unimaginable 
heights, scrutinising in turn every radiating glen, 
and remarking all that moves therein. 

Yes, man and beast, each fly-tormented mule, 
new yeaned ibex kid, and German botanist climb- 
ing economically without a guide, is marked, 
scrutinised, summed up, and kept under day-long 
observation, and his probabilities of life assessed 
upon certain grim actuarial tables known only to 
the tribes who seek their meat from God. You 
had not thought it ? You scarce credit it. “ Have 
never seen them.” But they have seen you, and in 
the Hautes-Pry6n6es, or the Atlas, your every 


The Testing of the New Thing us 

step has been marked from your rising up to your 
lying down. 

Without counting the buzzards, which are 
chiefly concerned with mice, there are at least 
three kinds of watchers of the world below. 

First, and most in evidence, is the griffon, a 
lordly creature to the eye, with vast, square-cut 
wings, and a small woolly head sunk into a snow- 
white ruff; a vulture he, with a vulture's appetite 
for carrion — and for nothing else. His interest 
in a man begins when that man is in the act of 
falling, and becomes urgent only in the case of 
the fall proving fatal. 

The eagle is smaller, but more powerful; he, too, 
is a carrion feeder, but will carry off grouse, 
marmot, and red-deer calf. In hard weather 
Scottish eagles will pack and destroy a full-grown 
hind, whilst the larger race of Tibet is credited 
with killing wolf in fair fight. But the fear of man 
is on him — he learned it long ago, and there is no 
record of this bird attacking even a small boy. 
Sooth to say, he is both cowardly and stupid, 
though all-glorious to see. 

Last and most formidable, because incalcula- 
ble, is the great bearded vulture, or lammergeier 


ii6 


The Master-Girl 


(the Gypaete of the Gavarnie Izard-hunters) , a 
sly rufQan who makes up in brains what he lacks 
in weapons. This sort is as fond of carrion as the 
others, and has ways of his own for providing it. 

The Master-Girl and her pursuers had not run 
three bow-shots before the eye of a watcher was 
upon them. By the time they had gone a mile, 
the whole planetary system of the nearest peak was 
disturbed ; and before the girl had taken sanctuary, 
a ring of big birds was circling half a mile above 
her. This might mean business. 

Her climbing was watched by the griffons 
without excitement; their turn might come later, 
but had not come yet ; it was the bearded vulture 
which dropped out of the blue in bold spirals and 
marked the four humans disappear into that 
chemin^e. Then, if a bird of prey ever swears, 
he swore, for a man climbing between the straight 
walls of a cleft is of no use to him. 

When two bodies fell there was commotion; 
the griffons shut their wings and plunged two 
thousand feet in a few seconds, but clapped on the 
brakes and bore up again with the wind rattling 
in their great drab quills, for the bodies had not 
rebounded upon the scree, but lay close under the 


The Testing of the New Thing 117 

rock — where something else might fall. Patience, 
brothers ! 

Moreover, there were two living figures yet upon 
that rock, and these the griffons held in fear. 
They climbed the sky again and waited on, 
wheeling narrowly and near. 

Not so the bearded vulture, playing a lone 
hand and pursuing the traditional tactics of his 
race ; he skimmed the summit of that aiguille and 
took stock of its capabilities. Two humans were 
still within the cleft. The upper was well sheltered 
from above, and on both sides. He turned short 
to keep her in his eye (a wicked crimson eye it 
was). At that moment she faltered, slipped, and 
was almost gone. Instantly he dipped and edged 
in, but she recovered herself; out he went again. 
Whilst turning he once more caught sight of the 
lower figure; he had lost it for a while. It had 
shifted, had emerged from the cleft, and was 
clinging to an exposed, projecting buttress, over- 
hung from above, safe from a down-right stroke, 
but from a side-flick, eh? 

The human moved slowly; it went short upon 
one of its fore legs; it seemed, and was, very lame, 
very tired, and unsure of its footing. 


ii8 


The Master-Girl 


Meanwhile the two humans in question knew 
nothing of the scrutiny of which they were the 
subjects, being otherwise and fully engaged. 
Besides, griffons may guide a hunter to a kill, but 
signify naught else. The presence of the real 
danger had clean escaped them, for the bearded 
vulture is less given to soaring than to gliding 
along a cliff-face close in, ready for the emergencies 
of anything that moves thereon. 

The light had begun to go ; it was abominably 
cold; a flurry of small snow found its way into 
the cleft, and ran in little round dry pellets upon 
the naked back of the Master-Girl crouching for 
warmth like a hare in her form, and hugging her- 
self against the strong shudders which ran through 
her. To have fought her battle and to have so 
nearly won, and to lose life, and all from such a 
childish blunder ! If she had but the smallest of 
weapons, a skinning-knife, a bodkin, she would 
take her chance; but the bodkin had gone when 
the kaross went, and her knife had been wrenched 
from her hand when she struck. There was not 
one little wee loose stone within reach; she had 
tried them all, even to breaking her nails. 

And that wretch, Low-Mah, down there, not 


The Testing of the New Thing 119 

six bows’ length away, lamed as he was, would 
be girding at her all the time, breaking off at 
whiles to work desperately at that crippling arrow. 
It was certainly loosening. One barb held; but 
such was the fellow’s courage that he would tear 
it out yet, and then ? 

Until it drew he could not get back into the 
cleft, for his pinned-up hand was upon that side. 
When he rested from his bouts of self-torture he 
indemnified himself by assailing her with insults 
and taimts, governing his voice lest she should 
guess how far he was gone. She did guess, and 
with chattering teeth gave him fully as good as 
she took. It was very pitiful, inexpressibly 
vulgar, this nose-to-nose pitched battle of pri- 
meval Billingsgate. Lo, did ye think that pas- 
sionate hate first found expression in our time ? 

He played upon her shaken nerves. Could she 
not see those child-eating boys, sitting at her 
either elbow, their reddened teeth a- work, click! 
click! To which sally Deh-Yan, stroking her 
own hair and pointing down to his, rejoined that 
his scalp should hang from her belt ere night 
with the top-knots of the other two. “And, 
ah me! I have no knife, Low-Mah; shall I find it 


120 


The Master-Girl 


under thine arm? — or am I to borrow thine for 
our little business ? with other like endearments. 
Pity them both. 

In the middle of one of her ripostes the girl 
choked, for the last barb had given, his arm was 
free. Nodding to her mutely, for he was well- 
nigh sick with agony, the man brought his hand 
down; he stripped the feathers, biting the gut 
whipping, and took the barbs in his teeth; he had 
but to draw the nock through his forearm, and 
would be not only free but weaponed. 

He drew inch by inch ; it came ; he had it in his 
hand. “ Now, my Heart, I begin. Wait for me, 
my dove, my love! I am coming for thee!” 

He shook the new snow from his ears, shifted 
his hold, lifted a foot, still grimly nodding his 
unspoken threat, and — next moment was reeling 
out into empty air, whilst a huge bird, which had 
dealt the buffet, staggered past and plunged, then 
opening wide wings regained its balance and 
swept short zig-zags down — down in pursuit of 
its falling booty. 

But the Master-Girl beat her little fists upon the 
stone and wept. “ I would have killed him yet I ” 
she wailed in that bitterness of spirit which over- 


I2I 


The Testing of the New Thing 

comes the bravest when the ideal perfection 
of some all-but-achieved success has been marred 
at the ultimate moment. 

It is always so in life. Napoleon, instead of 
yielding his sword to the conquering Briton, 
rattles off from his last battle-field in a well-horsed 
caleche. Nor did every French ship strike her 
colours at Trafalgar. Nor did the allies enter 
Sevastopol on the night of the Alma as they might 
so easily have done; nor did Kitchener catch the 
gallant and adroit De Wet. 

Her chaplet lacked the full foliage that is ac- 
corded to the victor in fiction only. 

Bear not too hardly upon her, ye who are 
proudly and perfectly straightforward in all 
speech and action, if I confess upon her behalf that 
in after life the Master-Girl made not quite so 
much of the bearded vulture's intervention as 
you might have done. 

She had achieved an unheard-of and almost 
incredible feat, and knew it — but — (now came that 
deadly reaction !) the Shape — Strength was ebb- 
ing from her. Would her luck hold? 

She had no fear of her feathered ally. Him, 
she, craning far over, had watched take seizin of 


122 


The Master-Girl 


his kill, and then, as the light went suddenly, 
spread vast wings and racquet-tail and sail forth 
across the darkening scree and blacker forest- 
spires to some roosting cranny of his own. 

Her knees gave way beneath her, her wrists 
jerked as she let herself down from ledge to jut, 
and from jut to cranny of that cheminie of death; 
her eyes were set in her head and her jaws cramped 
with a tongue-drying ague of fear of falling. In 
a word she was as nearly forespent as a girl of 
sixteen may be, and has a right to be, who has 
run as she had run, fought as she had fought, 
and fasted as she had fasted, and was still 
fasting. 

At last (after what agonies of apprehension 
and endurance) the tension upon her fingers 
might be relaxed, for one foot was upon the first 
loose stone of the scree. Its fellow found some- 
thing soft and chilly beneath it. At the touch 
of a dead enemy the Master-Girl’s eyes were 
enlightened as if with food. 

The rites of victory must be observed. She 
fell to, panting thickly as she cut and tugged, not 
for the horror of her task but from sheer ex- 
haustion, and whilst arising to her feet to utter 


The Testing of the New Thing 123 

the three whoops which the occasion demanded,^ 
found her legs bending, and dropped asleep upon 
the stones between her silent foes. So have men 
fallen asleep upon the rack when the screws were 
eased. 

But the Porter-Soul which seldom sleeps would 
allow her no long respite. Much remained to do, 
and was she not still in peril? Before long she 
suddenly threw the gathering snow off her and 
glanced around keenly. The night-wind blowing 
up the crevice was tainted with — what? Four 
green, shining eyes were watching her. She 
sniffed — “fox!” and contemptuously threw a 
stone, and, ere its rattle had ceased, felt her scalp 
crawl, for over the spruce spires travelled the 
drear, anti-human menace of the wolf. 

Her Totem was obscured and for once seemed 
far, but there was another resource near at 
hand and familiar, if only — only — it were propi- 
tious I those malignant Boy-Ghosts whose jibbering 
squeaks and rustlings had added untold horrors to 
the last hour of her darkling vigil upon the ledge. 


1 Still given at the breaking-up of a fox, and more cere- 
moniously, with winded horn, as the hallalai at the death of 
the German stag. 


124 


The Master-Girl 


These, for some cause, had spared her, might she 
not entreat their continued good-will? She had 
known and played with all three before her 
promotion to the tribal govemess-ship ; there was 
nothing between herself and the elder two; the 
eaten child did not count. Doubtless they would 
be hungry (Oh how her own vitals pinched!). 
Quick, then, an offering! Savagely, desperately 
she hacked the hands from Low-Mah, and (it 
had been impossible before her sleep) bestowed 
them upon a ledge some five bows’ length up that 
dark ascent. 

“ Pen-noo ! — Lab-go-nee ! — here is meat ! — See 
I bring you food! — I bring it in peril of my life! 
Ye, who kept yourselves from the grey wolf, 
keep me this night! ” 

She was down again and tore herself from the 
place. Partake she would not, though her nature 
cried out for food. A brave of her race would 
have had no qualms, — but a squaw? — No! 

Weakly, and with her spirit riding her reluctant 
flesh as a ruthless rider urges a failing horse, did 
D^h-Yan set her face upon that ghost-guarded 
journey up the valley, nor did wolf, lynx, or worse 
molest her. 


The Testing of the New Thing 125 

Her foes were the tormenting thoughts which, 
vulture-like, wheel closely around a spirit encum- 
bered by a weakened body. 

Was it worth it ? Her man had grown cold and 
silent and strange to her. Twice the agony of 
wounded affection superadded to crushing bodily 
fatigue brought her to a stand beneath dark 
boughs at some rougher gradient. Then with 
shut eyes and chin driven hard against a labouring 
bosom she fought it out. The nurse-spirit tri- 
umphed. “If I lie down and sleep here — I shall 
not awake again, and he — will die, or at best be 
a lame man for his life.” Then, lifting her face 
again, she would draw a deep breath and set her 
jaw to endure the anguish of walking, and so, by 
a series of shortening spurts, reeling and rocking, 
she reached the foot of the face. But it was a 
dog-weary girl, without one spark of the pride of 
victory alight within her, who crawled in over 
the cave-sill. 


CHAPTER VI 


RENUNCIATIONS 

A FTER the recital the woman flagged again, 
and presently could hardly keep her eyes 
open. At a sign from her man she lay down and 
was dead asleep almost before she had drawn up 
her knees in the posture assumed by the sleeping 
savage all the world over, the ante-natal position 
in which the pre-dynastic Egyptians buried their 
dead. 

But Pul Yun could not sleep. He had passed 
through every phase of mental agony; had spent 
a long day at the torture-stake of suspense and 
anticipation, and had been released from it to find 
himself confronted by a crisis in his domestic 
relations. 

He understood only too well what had happened. 
Since the world and wiving began was there ever 
such a woman? Was there ever such a predica- 
ment for the husband of a woman ? Use and wont 
126 


Renunciations 


127 


and the immemorial practice of his own, and all 
other tribes, had fixed the relative positions of 
the sexes. This man believed as firmly as did 
the Apostle Paul that the man was made first, 
and was the head of the woman, who was pro- 
vided for him, for his comfort and use by his 
Goddess, the Sun, and over whom he, the man, 
was bound to exercise the rights of mastery and 
lordship to the very fullest extent. Whilst young 
and comely the wife was a valuable possession, 
but, when stringy, and past work and child-bear- 
ing, it had until recently been a question in times 
of scarcity whether she might not be eaten. That 
the Sun-disc Men had recently decided against the 
older use is a point in favour of the Sun-disc Men 
which we, their descendants, may score to their 
credit. The Fuegians, at the time of Charles 
Darwin’s visit, still occasionally dined upon their 
grandmothers.^ As to conceding to one of the 
subject sex equal rights, the thing was extra- 
revolutionary, it was indeed inconceivable, it was 
outside the region of discussion. 

But, what was this that had happened? Here 
in this chance-begun housekeeping, the whole 
» As you may read in The Voyage of the ''Beagle'* 


128 


The Master-Girl 


matter had been turned topsy-turvy; the mocca- 
sins were on contrary feet ; the hatchet was in the 
wrong hand. He had come out to capture a wife, 
and a wife captured him. He had broken his leg 
and she had mended it. Twice he had been at- 
tacked by a bear, and twice she (not he) had 
beaten it off, killing it — ^actually killing the 
monster, — at the second encounter (think of it ! — 
who ever heard the like ?) . On that occasion he , the 
man, had borne himself stoutly, and as a brave; 
he had faced his foe axe in hand, without hope, and 
had made no moan, and would have taken his 
mauling, and his death, without a whimper. Thus 
had he preserved his self-respect, had participated 
in the fight, and had in some roundabout fashion 
come to persuade himself that the skin was his, 
and that the necklace of claws and teeth which was 
now around his neck had a right to be there. 
(It did not sit comfortably as yet, but comfort 
and assurance would have come in time, never 
fear. Did not the Prince Regent assert so fre- 
quently that as “ Major Brown ’Vhe had fought at 
Mont St. Jean, that at length, as George the 
Fourth, his gracious Majesty related the story 
with embellishments at the Waterloo banquet and 


Renunciations 


129 


appealed to Wellington himself for substantiation ? 
“ ’T was I gave the order, ‘ Up Guards and at *em! ’ 
— You heard nWy Arthur?'') 

Such, alack, is poor human nature in these 
latter days, nor was it more veracious in the 
days of ignorance. 

Yes, Pul Yun had begun to believe that he had 
killed that bear. 

But who killed the three braves whose raw 
scalps lay upon the cave floor? Those three 
scalps were another guess matter, a different story 
altogether. There was no straight, or even 
plausible, manner of accounting for them. He 
saw no way of persuading himself now, or in the 
future, that he had had any hand in the taking of 
them. 

In a word, they were his wife's, every single hair 
of them, — not his, alas, not his! 

In a word, this poor ignorant savage man was 
all at sea in the lore of Modern Officialism, — 
the whole art of assumption was hid from him; 
by which I mean the mental and spiritual capacity 
to appropriate to one's own peculiar credit not 
only the results of another man's courage, luck, or 
capacity, but the actual performance itself. This 
9 


130 


The Master-Girl 


is the recognised modern practice. The pupil 
paints or plans, the master signs the drawings and 
takes the commission. The devil devils, the 
leader wins the case. The C. I. V. storms Bavians- 
kloof, the alderman of his ward receives the war- 
medal. The Stunt-Sahib, squattering through 
bottomless mud, organises the new annexation, his 
chief down at the base under a punkah gets the 
thanks of the Governor General. 

This is how we do it to-day. They did it other- 
wise in days when the All-Seeing Sun was believed 
to shine with approval upon the Sayer-of-the- 
thing-that-is, but to hide her face from the liar, 
and the sneak, and the tribesman who stole the 
axe or the honour of another. 

So poor foolish Pul Yun gnawed his knuckles for 
long dark hours wishing that his wife and he were 
dead, and but for a soul of goodness in things evil 
— a red savage, for one — might e'en have brought 
his wish to the birth by braining the woman as 
she slept and subsequently pitching himself off 
the crag. He dreed his weird for the lee-lang 
watches of the coldest and blackest night that 
ever he had known, colder and blacker than those 
which he had worn through after the breaking of 


Renunciations 


131 

his leg, and before the Master-Girl had found and 
taken possession of him. He would say in the af- 
ter years, and did plainly believe, that during that 
night-watch there were strange visitants to the 
cave : that two birds flew in out of the darkness and 
sat with him; the one upon his right hand was a 
ptarmigan of the scree, winter- white and soft, 
clucking sweet things, gentle things, about the 
sleeping girl. The one upon his left hand a raven 
of the cliff, blacker than the midnight or the 
shadows of the cave, croaking evil things, showing 
the poor, hardly-bestowed savage all the shame 
and the ignominy and the laughing scorn of the 
home-coming to his tribe. 

But the longest and blackest of nights wears at 
last, and the dawn-streak shot aloft, and the cold 
grey peaks took fire and glowed like rosy brands 
amid the ash of a hearth; then, whilst the dawn 
brightened and the upper ranges were dyed a 
colour that had no name to the watcher, nor has 
gained one yet, for it is not the heart of a rose, nor 
saffron, nor salmon, nor hath it an earthly counter- 
part — it was whilst the heavens above him were 
declaring the glory of God and the firmament 
showing His handiwork, that the last struggle 


132 


The Master-Girl 


took place, the tender clucking mastered the dull 
croaking: the raven stalked forth to the cave-sill 
and took wing adown the gulf of air; but thrice 
the little snow-white ptarmigan to sed himself 
aloft into the keen clear morning, and thrice he 
came circling down again to the cave-sill with 
stiffly bent wing and inflated throat singing his 
song of praise to the Lord who made and warmed 
him, and then he too was gone and the watcher 
was alone. 

Then Pul Yun, under the stirring of a new im- 
pulse, did a very strange and wonderful thing. 
Taking the trophy from his own neck he laid it 
across the throat of the sleeping woman. Her 
eyes opened, her hand went up, she felt, saw, and 
understood. She arose to her knees; a new and 
beautiful light was in her eyes, a great and pa- 
thetic awe had fallen upon her. 

“ No — thou shalt not do it ! — No ! — How shall 
my husband go home to his people bare-necked 
whilst his wife walks behind him wearing — ^these ? 

“ I — will!” groaned the man. 

“You shall not, — you dare not, — you can not 1 ” 

“Be silent! — I say I will!” he groaned more 
harsh. 


Renunciations 


133 


Catching up scalps and necklace she cast every- 
thing at his feet and bent grovelling before him. 

“ What are these to me ? — I want but thee ! But 
to a brave they are more than father, mother, wife, 
or life itself.’' She did not speak in scorn, but 
from what she had seen and known, yet it hurt. 

“Stop, — cease, be still!” he cried abruptly and 
very fiercely, for how shall a man fight himself 
if his wife takes sides with his lower nature against 
the higher ? The woman did not understand ; she 
thought him enraged, she knew not why; but 
the jealousy which had poisoned their life for weeks 
past was cause enow. Plainly he must be 
humoured. 

“That is right! — Be master! — What am I? — 
Thy slave and a Little Moon girl, no more. Thou 
hast never beaten me yet, beat me now! — take the 
things! Let us be as we were — Yes,” with a 
dead-lift of self-renunciation, “ I will break my 
bow! ” She reached for the weapon where it lay, 
— what it meant for her only an inventor, and a 
successful inventor, can tell. To allay the un- 
reasoning jealousy, the rooted conservatism of 
her husband, this red girl would have put out of 
her life the new thing that she had thought out. 


134 


The Master-Girl 


brought to the birth, perfected, and tested at the 
risk of her very heart’s blood. 

As her hand closed upon the wood, a larger and 
stronger hand closed over both. Her lover 
silently drew her to himself. 


CHAPTER VII 


SHORT, SOMEWHAT DRY, BUT IMPORTANT 

W E must compress into three or four pages 
the labours and results of four busy months 
during which by frequent experiment and inces- 
sant practice these two young creatures worked at, 
and worked out the mechanics of their discovery. 

It was an opportunity of almost incalculable 
infrequency. Consider, I beseech you. Your 
savage, a man of a hunting tribe, lives normally 
from hand to mouth. Is game abundant and his 
hunting successful he gorges to repletion and sleeps 
long and heavily. Is food scarce he hunts the 
harder, sleeps lightly, eats sparingly, and has in 
prosperity no incentive, and in adversity no 
leisure for protracted and systematic experiment, 
even if he should find the impulse within himself, 
and be upheld by the applause and co-operation 
of his tribe. 

It is doubtful if the combination of rare and 
135 


136 


The Master-Girl 


delicate qualities which go to the making of an 
inventor present themselves once in a thousand 
generations of savage men, and how much rarer 
still must be that general recognition from his 
fellows without which a savage can effect nothing 
permanent. Even the privacy, which is hardly 
less essential than sympathy for a tentative effort, 
is wanting, for a savage lives in public, and the 
initial failures of the inventor not seldom in our 
own times expose him to the pitiless raillery of his 
contemporaries, a blighting, sterilising ridicule to 
which the child-nature of primitive man was cer- 
tainly not less sensitive than are the natures of 
monkeys, dogs, and children. 

The steadfast mind that can ignore and outstay 
the gibes of neighbours is not too common to-day, 
and was probably very rare indeed in that remote 
and ancient world of which my tale tells. 

That an armourer should work behind locked 
doors, and that it is folly to show unfinished work 
to a bairn are excellent adages. But savages are 
all bairns; indeed, among primitive peoples the 
environment is so unfavourable for invention 
that one might almost say that a savage never 
invents anything, and even in the case of his 


Short, Somewhat Dry, but Important 137 

stumbling upon a promising novelty, its unfamili- 
arity condemns it in the eyes of his comrades, 
if not in his own. 

Only in the excessively rare event of a reforming 
chief can any advance be registered. And how 
seldom does such a prodigy arise! The stars in 
their courses fight against such an avatar! We, 
the English of the twentieth century, are, take 
us all round, as open to reason and as receptive to 
the new idea as any folk upon this earth, or any 
that ever trod it; what is more, we are accustomed 
to reforms, we await them with expectancy if 
not with equanimity, we know full well that 
certain of our venerable institutions stand in need 
of tinkering, but we never dream that the impulse 
shall come from above. A codifying, or land- 
transfer-simplifying Lord Chancellor, or a reform- 
ing or unifying Archbishop are incredible. The 
processes by which such men climb to their posts 
disable their minds from criticising a system which 
has justified itself in their persons. Nor is it 
likely that a sachem will be impatient of a state 
of affairs which has landed him at the summit of 
his ambitions. A Peter the Great comes but once 


in an aeon. 


138 


The Master-Girl 


Here, however, in this snow-bound glen, was 
just that assemblage of conditions which stimu- 
late and protect the inventor whilst perfecting his 
invention. The store of frozen bear-meat secured 
leisure. There had been sufficient initial success 
to encourage continued experiment. The com- 
panionship of two united hearts provided the 
needful sympathy; nor was the touch of emulation 
wanting. The august mountains kept the ring, 
their snowy silence excluding the hee-haws of 
jealous ignorance. 

Heavens, how these children worked! Size, 
material, method of use, the best position, tra- 
jectories, — everything was an open question ; 
everything had to be mastered by trial, by com- 
petition, by comparison. Observe, there was 
absolutely no past, no tribal lore to handicap or 
guide. How they chattered! As to arrows, 
now, — should they head them with bone or with 
stone ? — How fledged ? — How straightened ? — Of 
what length? This brought on the bow, its size, 
its weight, its parent tree; wych-elm, ash, or 
cornel ? 

Pill Yun leaned to something small and short, 
handy for wood- work ; but after being consistently 


Short, Somewhat Dry, but Important 139 

out-shot by longer weapons of the Master-Girl’s 
choosing propelled by longer bow, gave way after 
some sulking. 

He was by way of learning. And so was she, 
for never again during those four months did she 
shoot her best in his presence, or to his knowledge. 
Thenceforward she would essay her longest flights 
in private, and found that the extreme range which 
contented her man was far from being the limit 
of her own bow. But this knowledge she kept to 
herself. 

Pul Yun was as yet a poor walker, but his in- 
firmity in no wise hindered his archery ; rather did 
it help, in that it tied him to the butts. His 
industry, his zeal to excel were tremendous, and 
there was reason that he should toil terribly to 
perfect himself in this novel art before presenting 
himself again to his tribe. He had by now de- 
termined, at Deh-Yan’s earnest intercession, and 
as the reasoned result of a couple of months’ 
watching of his shafts, to discard his spears. It 
was a momentous decision : who shall say what it 
meant to the war chief of a small tribe hard- 
pressed by stronger and better armed neighbours ? 

Conceive then, this human pair, mere young- 


140 


The Master-Girl 


sters according to our reckoning, cut off from the 
world, applying every faculty which they possessed 
to the study of their art. Doubt not that when 
once they had come to an agreement as to details 
progress was consistent and rapid; and as week 
by week their smaller and yet smaller marks were 
stricken at lengthened ranges, their exultation 
rose and hardened to solid confidence. 

So wore the days and the months of winter. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE FLITTING, AND THE FORERUNNER 

“T^EH-YAN, we must be going!” 

“ And thy leg ? ” 

“ Ah, yes, — but, stronger or weaker, we must go, 
or there will be no legs of mine, or of thine, to go 
upon I ” 

“ Dreams again ? — ^That hare ? ” 

The man nodded sagely and swept the white 
waste below the cave with apprehensive eyes. 
There was nothing to be seen. A delaying spring 
had hardly made itself evident at their height. 
The lammergeiers, in a cleft high overhead, were 
feeding a single clamorous youngster, a fat, downy 
chick, but the lammergeier lays its egg in the 
last days of the old year. The ravens were hard 
at work upon their nest, the wool was in (winter 
coat of stonebuck) , the first green egg would be 
laid within the week, for February was wearing 
according to our modern calendar. 

HI 


142 


The Master-Girl 


The stream had begun to trickle, the water- 
ousels were at work, but the larch was still un- 
tasselled, and not a flower had yet broken the 
snow crust, not even the fringed purple solda- 
nella, or the small pale crocuses at the edges of 
the drifts. The passes would still be piled deep 
with soft new falls. 

The crossing would be a desperate business as 
Pul Yun knew very well. Such a feat had never 
been essayed so early within human memory; 
all crossings (and such were rare events) had ever 
been made in the late autumn when the snows were 
hard. Yet he was in a fever to be gone, and the 
woman knew why. 

“ Thy Little Moons will make an early start of it 
— some of them at least will be up here presently 
looking for their lost braves.'' 

“ I buried them deeply — ^many stones did I 
roll down over them," said the girl gravely, 
thinking her own thoughts. 

“ But, their dogs (good wolves) will And them, 
never doubt," remarked Pul Yun. “It was bad 
luck, thy not killing their dogs the same night. 
Nay, I do not blame thee. Thou hadst run far 
and fast, and fought bravely, wonderfully; it 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 143 

makes my heart laugh to think of one woman 
fighting three braves and bringing away their 
scalps. Yes, I own thou wast tired out. All the 
same it was against us, and is against us still, 
that those three dogs were left to gnaw through 
their leashes and get away down to the tribe 
masterless. They will be brought up again and 
laid on and followed, and if they do not own to 
the trails of their dead masters, they will own to 
ours, which is as bad for us. No, we cannot fight 
the whole of thy tribe, we must be moving, and at 
once.'' 

This was final. Deh-Yan, who had put in three 
whole days at arrow-making, arose with the last 
and finest specimen of the art in her hands. It 
was fledged with the white and black quills of 
ptarmigan and pointed with a keen splinter of 
bone. Holding the venomous looking thing be- 
tween her hands by point and nock, she straight- 
ened a weary back and lifted it towards the young 
moon. “ O Totem of my people and of me and 
of my New Thing, grant that this one at least 
of all my arrows may serve me at my need ! " 

They began their packing, a serious affair ; their 
outfit must be cut down to the least, last ounce. 


144 


The Master-Girl 


It must consist of just food, raw meat, their 
weapons, the bearskin to sleep in, and the 
trophies; no more. 

Double moccasined they set forth clothed with 
deerskin leggings to the body, dividing the loads 
between them, an event significant and of the first 
importance in human history. 

“ We must march light,’’ said Pul Yun, and 
paused. D^h-Yan frowned, set her mouth, and 
tossed from the cave-sill the hoard of rock- 
crystals, amethysts, and cairngorm as dear to a 
girl of the Magdalenian age as her diamonds to a 
bride of our own. 

“This I will not leave,” continued the man, 
nodding approval of the accomplished sacrifice of 
vanities. The thing reserved was the shoulder- 
blade of the dead bear upon which he, no mean 
draughtsman, had etched the story of the fight; 
yet, watching the resolution of his wife to disen- 
cumber herself, he presently cast down his achieve- 
ment, and turned his back to it where it lay 
— yet, as we know, it was not lost. Did not the 
drip from the roof glaze it over and preserve it ? 
Did not the wet flow up in which it lay enclasped 
and seal it down ? Did not a sheet encrustation 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 145 

from the roof fall and cover it, and finally in the 
fulness of time, did not the Professor come fum- 
bling along and find it ? And is it not to-day the 
especial glory and pride of a certain case in a 
certain University Museum? 

He was minded to work up as high as his leg 
would carry him, and then, after a heavy meal, 
to make a night of it, coiled up with his wife in 
that thick, warm, capacious bearskin in a hole 
in a drift. “ Walk whilst the light lasts and you 
can see your marks,” was his rede. “ Who knows 
what the weather upon the pass may be to- 
morrow?” It might well be that a“fim” from 
the south would be blowing on the cpl, and then 
they must just lie snug and sleep it out, yes, to 
the last strip of their meat, if needs were, for to 
face it would be — death! 

Up they trudged, and up, and still up, bowed 
double beneath their burdens, occasionally stop- 
ping to straighten weary backs, always choosing 
the outcrops of bare rock where such trended 
upward, but for an hour on end sinking mid-thigh 
deep at every toilsome step in soft, new snow. 
The last of the trees was far below them ; even the 
trailing pine and juniper had given out. They 


10 


146 


The Master-Girl 


were working up into their first cloud; below the 
ragged coldness of its moving edge Deh-Yan 
turned and took her last look upon the country of 
her childhood and her folk. There was no regret 
in her heart, nor any love for any human creature 
whom she was leaving. Her father she had never 
known. He had perished young. (Most savages die 
young — hard is the life and heavy the mortality; 
the hunter-tribes barely keep up their stocks de- 
spite early marriage.) Her mother, whom she 
could just remember, was also dead. Her child-life 
had been made bitter to her by blows and grinding 
service rendered to gruff masters and shrewish 
mistresses. The small girl-child had struggled 
up; other children died, she survived, being one 
of the indestructibles, sharpened, hardened, tough- 
ened exceedingly by her environment. Such an 
upbringing, whatsoever else it may do, does not 
cultivate the affections. How jealous had she 
been of the boys! How she had despised the 
girls, her inferiors in speed and daring! When 
promoted to the post of Governess, how she had 
bullied her small charges ! 

No, she gazed with unshaken bosom and clear 
eye upon the valleys of her home. The last peep ! 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 147 

And there, miles and miles away, and, oh, so far 
beneath, was a something strung out across a 
snow- field, a something which would have escaped 
the best eye in a regiment of modern Alpini, a 
something which moved slowly, and was withal 
so faint and so far, that a strand of cobweb seen 
across a pane at the breadth of a wide room would 
be cable-broad compared with it. “Wah, we 
started none too soon,” was Pul Yun^s comment, 
and, leg- weary as he found himself, he kept at 
it, butting away upward into cloud and falling 
snow so long as he was sure of his line, then, 
confident that the advance-party of the Little 
Moons, supposing that they had got upon the 
spoor, and meant sticking to it, would not have 
daylight to make it good, he bored into the lee- 
side of a big drift, throwing out the loose snow 
behind him like a dog, and invited Deh-Yan to 
accept it as a camp. 

Deh-Yan disliked the idea of camping in the 
presence of pursuit, but she saw that her man 
had marched as far as he was able. Moreover, 
he was now in his element ; a brave who had been 
a member of four war-parties had a right to his 
opinion as to what other braves would or would not 


148 


The Master-Girl 


do. “They will follow on to the edge of the 
cloud/’ said he. “Above that the new fall will 
cover our sign, not wholly, but enough to make 
them call off the dogs when the sun sets. And 
we — we will be up and off before She rises to- 
morrow. And I say, Deh-Yan, I do not like 
those good wolves of thy people.” 

“ Nor I — and if they follow on ? ” 

“They won’t. They are wholly out of their 
country, and I am nearing mine, and have travelled 
this road before, which none of them have, as I 
think — at least none that returned.” 

“ That is so,” assented D^h-Yan. “ When I was 
quite little, two of our young men tried this pass. 
They never came back. Tell me,” she went on, 
snuggling down into the bearskin, and feeling the 
blood begin to move again in her toes. “What 
brought thee over this awful road?” 

“ I was out for a wife. 

“ But were there no girls in the tribes south of 
thee that thou didst take this high white path ? ” 
“Oh, yes, there are girls everywhere, but the 
tribes to the south of the Sun-Men, the Hawks 
and the White Wolf people, are so much stronger 
than we, that we have had to give up going to 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 149 

them for wives. It was our braves who never 
came back from those journeys.’* 

“ Oho ! those tribes would not be braver, I 
think? then, how?” 

“ They have an all-year-round camp close to the 
best quarry of weapon-stone. They have many 
slaves at work doing nothing else but axe-mak- 
ing and so are better armed than we. Also 
they stockade their camps. There is no getting 
in or getting out of their villages. I think our 
bows will surprise them.” He added, “And 
now, if thou hast eaten all thou canst, go to 
sleep. I shall watch, or rather lie awake and 
listen.” 

Pul Yun had out-marched his pursuers, but he 
had over-marched himself. The pride of man- 
hood kept him going; the same pride forbade him 
to acknowledge his terrible weariness, but his wife 
was not deceived. 

“ I will watch first,” she had said, and had in- 
sisted upon taking a last look round their hiding- 
place before turning in . U pon her return she found , 
as she had anticipated, that her man was sunk in 
the deepest sleep that nature knows. The Master- 
Girl nodded, built herself a line of marks, slight, 


The Master-Girl 


150 

but sufficient, and glided off into the snow-lit 
night silent as an owl. 

At midnight Pul Yun turned himself and woke 
with a sense of something lost. He was alone. 
For some moments his locality, and his very in- 
dividuality escaped him, so deeply had he plunged, 
then both returned. 

“Deh-Yan, come in here, it is my watch,” he 
whispered, but there was no reply. The man 
peered forth into the darkness, and got to his feet 
armed. His wife was gone. He listened. The 
night was thick and still; what wind was blowing 
came up the pass from the glen which they had 
left. It was bitter cold. Suddenly, from down 
the pass came one small sound, slight and keen as 
the squeak of a bat, but it was not the squeak of 
a bat, and Pul Yun felt the hairs creep upon his 
neck, for it was the shrieking yelp of a wolf. Now 
a wolf is an animal which hunts and lives in a 
society of its own, a society which has common 
needs, and co-operates in its enterprises. Hence 
wolves have a multiplicity of cries with which to 
express their wants and intentions, and many of 
these were known to Pul Y un from childhood. But 
a wolf, though a villain, is no coward, and rarely, 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 151 


most rarely, expresses pain. As a rule, when 
trapped he dies mute. What meant that single 
piercing yelp? To the ear and trained imagination 
of the woodlander it signified a spasm of surprise, 
despair, disappointment, and grief. It was a call 
to the pack, ''To me, my comrades, Haro! I am 
betrayed I 

That his wife’s hand was in it Pul Yun never 
doubted, but how deep was her hand in it? and 
could she withdraw that hand ? To have left him 
asleep and gone off upon a lone hunting at mid- 
night was — it was — like her! But, it was hard 
upon him, very hard. 

He took his weapons, axe and knife — for of what 
service are arrows in a midnight? — and moved in 
the direction of the cry. Within a few strides he 
stumbled upon the first of her marks, then upon a 
second, later upon a third. This, then, was no 
unpremeditated escapade; no, like everything 
else which she did, this foray towards the camp 
of the pursuing enemy was a thought-out business. 

The snow creaked, something was coming. A 
quick, light breathing, a swift foot, Deh-Yan was 
upon him, had caught him silently by the arm, 
had turned him, and was urging him to his top 


152 


The Master-Girl 


speed. He raced beside her obediently in blind 
faith; she smelt of wolf and of blood. There was 
a cry of wolves behind them as they ran, but Deh- 
Yan was laughing. The cry, mingled with the 
shouts of hunters, rose to a crash. 

“That is the last of it — they have come upon 
my kill, and are baying upon the blood. They 
can carry the line no farther.’' 

She was right, the fierce, wild clamour rose and 
fell and rose again, but was stationary. 

“But we must be upon the trail. There is no 
room here for thee and for me.” The Master-Girl 
was speaking with quick decision; her husband 
listened, guessing wildly; they had picked up the 
marks, had found the snow-camp ; she was refold- 
ing the bearskin ; he gathered his own affairs and 
followed her. 

“Whither? Thou hast never been this way 
before, and even I am unsure of our road in this 
thickness and mirk.” 

“ Anywhere is good — it is sheer death to loiter. 
We must risk everything upon speed and the 
chance of a further snowfall. Run thy best now, 
I will tell thee more to-morrow.” 

Hours later in the first grey of a wintry dawn 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 153 


they had halted and dug themselves a second cave. 
This time they both snuggled within it, and sat 
panting and weak, listening for sounds of pursuit, 
and hearing only the ghostlike cackle of the 
mountain choughs at play amid cloud and falling 
snow overhead. They had got to their farthest; 
if followed up and found now they must die. Rest 
and sleep and food were imperative claims which 
would take no denials. Snow was falling, they 
had still a chance. They ate and slept and were 
not interrupted. 

They awoke in an unknown world, small flakes 
fell steadily and straight, no wind breathed, there 
was no sun or sign of sun ; it was one whiteness of 
diffused light in which the sense of direction was 
defeated. 

They sat close as snowbound hares and munched 
bear-meat, D6h-Yan telling her story between the 
mouthfuls. 

“ After I mounted guard it came to me that my 
people — I mean the Little Moons would never have 
come up so high so early in the season for game. 
It is no winter-hunting that we saw below us at 
the edge of the cloud, it is a war-party, and they 
mean scalps. Also, it seemed to me, even at that 


154 


The Master-Girl 


distance, I could make out Good Wolf with 
them.” 

“ Good eyes thou must have ! — ^but, go on.” 

“ Now it came to me that with Good Wolf they 
could not very well lose our trail, and being on the 
war-path, all braves too, and marching light, we 
should not be able to outmarch them, burdened 
as we are, and — and ” 

“And — and — ” mimicked the husband, “my 
wife did not wish to leave her skin behind, eh ? ” 

“We find it useful, thou and I, warm too,” 
murmured the wife, drawing the deep-piled pelt 
around her lover and burying her own nose in the 
soft fur. “ But it was not for this skin only, 
but for two others for which I was taking thought.” 

“They are not so furry, those two,” chuckled 
Pul Yun, pinching her. 

“ It seemed to me,” resumed the Master-Girl 
sedately, “ that if it were a war-party of braves, 
with Good Wolf, too, our chance was bad, unless 
>> 

“ Unless someone somehow foiled our sign ? ” 
whispered the man ponderingly. “ But how? ” 

“ That was the question. I went down to their 
camp and made friends with the first good wolf 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 155 

that came up to me. There were others, but they 
were curled up each with his master, this one was 
the only watch they had set. I listened, I saw. 
Then I was for coming away, for ten braves and 
as many good wolves are bad company for one 
girl. But the getting away again was not easy. 
Gow-Loo’s good wolf (I knew him, and he me) 
was suspicious. He walked around my knees so 
closely I could hardly move my feet. I could not 
speak to him for fear of rousing the camp. At 
last, when he had licked my hands, I got him to let 
me out and to follow. When I had led him a good 
way, and he was upon my hatchet-hand, and a 
little in front of me, I killed him. I had not 
meant him to have spoken, but the light was bad 
and he was very quick. It took me two strokes. 
The rest thou knowest.” 

Pul Yun did know that his wife had run a fright- 
ful risk, and that once again her foresight and cool 
courage had brought her through. What he did 
not know was that she owed her life to the fact that 
her dead enemy’s wolf, or wolf-dog, was still 
ignorant of the art of barking and had met the 
night-comer to his master’s camp in the silent 
fashion of his wild parents. But, the wonder of 


156 


The Master-Girl 


it ! His inmost heart told him that this adventure 
would have been beyond him : he would not have 
risked the certainty of being pulled down by 
wolves, good or bad, and taken from them by their 
masters to dree a crueller ending at the stake. 

Meanwhile snow fell steadily for a day and a 
night. The fugitives sat close and contrived to 
keep themselves warm, but their stock of food, 
howsoever well husbanded, was running out. 
Their position was already critical, presently it 
might be desperate, but they were spared the 
pangs of indecision or of divided counsels. Both 
recognised that their very lives depended upon 
doing nothing. To exhaust their bodily heat by 
struggling in deep new drift would be madness. 
And whither? Their last mark was lost, they 
knew not north from south, whilst the snow 
continued falling. No, they must sit it out, 
even if they starved where they sat. 

By the evening of the third day the last of the 
meat was gone. They were huddling in silence, 
having discussed the question of eating their leg- 
gings and moccasins on the morrow, and agreed to 
refrain. 

“For,” said Pul Yun, “we could never get 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 157 

away from this snow-camp without our leg-gear, 
so we may as well starve clothed and with a hope 
in our hearts, as starve two days later half -naked 
with none.” And to this the Master-Girl had 
agreed. 

But the situation was far from cheerful and did 
not conduce to much conversation. 

“ Hark! — what is that? ” 

“Hush, on thy life, hush! — we are well 
hidden.” 

During their headlong flight from their first 
halt, and in the course of the various doublings 
and subterfuges by which the fugitives had hoped 
to break the continuity of their trail and baffle 
their pursuers, these youngsters had most effect- 
ually lost their bearings. This, their second, and 
which threatened to prove itself their final camp, 
was excavated in the side of one among many 
round-topped drifts which studded a level plain, or 
what seemed such, for its limits were hidden; it 
was probably the frozen surface of some small 
lake, or such another expanse as the Andermatt 
valley, a green and pleasant place in the summer 
months, upon which several lateral glens con- 
verged, a haimt of the mountain bison and the 


The Master-Girl 


158 

tall, wide-antlered stag, but in winter a dreary 
waste avoided by man and beast. 

Yet, something was approaching, for the snow, 
frozen crisply by the evening’s chill, crunched 
beneath heavy feet. There was the deep, rhyth- 
mical panting of a huge body labouring hugely. 
What on earth might this be ? Four thoroughly 
frightened human eyes peered forth from the spy- 
hole left at the mouth of the snow-cave, and 
beheld — What think ye? A great, bald, black 
block of a head, maned at the temples and nape 
and hung with a pair of shield-shaped hairy ears, 
was butting through the drifts. A coil of bristly 
trunk was stowed away between a pair of prodi- 
gious tusks which showed yellow amid the whiter 
snows around them. They were as stout as young 
beeches and curled upon themselves in such wise 
that their points were useless to the monster who 
bore them. This had probably been his downfall ; 
some younger rival with shorter weapons, shorter 
and lighter, but with points which could be brought 
to bear, had ousted this patriarch from the herd. 
Here was a rogue mammoth upon his travels, 
setting the height and width of a mountain range 
between himself and the scene of his disgrace, a 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 159 

Napoleon on his way to St. Helena, diswived, 
discrowned, a tragedy of brute existence. The 
great heart was hot within him, he was boiling to 
avenge his wrongs upon the first creature that he 
might meet, and meantime was working off his 
fury in tempestuous exertions. What was a 
fifty- or sixty-mile march to the enormous sinews 
of limbs seasoned by migrations and combats of 
a hundred and fifty years? His breath smoked 
around him as he forged his way along, now paw- 
ing the snow under him, now wallowing over it, 
using his huge belly as a raft. 

Evidently he had fought his fight to a finish, 
had bellowed, butted, and thrust at some more 
adroit or better-armed youngster (some youth 
of seventy or eighty summers, maybe), who had 
worn him down and worsted him, and now, with 
such holes and rents in his shaggy sides as would 
have been death to any smaller beast, and were 
gruesome to see, he had relinquished the partners 
and pastures of his lusty prime, and was a wanderer 
upon the face of the earth until death — death 
which would from henceforth ambush his path 
and his lying down, for no keenly-interested wives 
would henceforth watch over his safety. No, 


i6o 


The Master-Girl 


with yearly waning powers he must stave off 
doom as he might, but come it would at length, 
a grisly onslaught of a horde of lions, a staked 
pitfall, a snow-hidden morass. 

D^h-Yan shuddered at the sight of his small, 
red, wicked eye. 

“If he gets our wind!’' she whispered, in the 
ghost of a pixie’s whisper, and was well pinched 
for the indiscretion. The giant did not get their 
wind, he had something else to think of. When 
he paused for breath close to their cave, they could 
see the great wall of hairy side twitching with the 
smart of the raw gashes with which it was scored, 
the records of that desperate and final conflict, 
for it is the law of the elephant herd that a de- 
throned master bull shall never re-try the issue : 
once down he is an outcast for the rest of his life, 
and a terror to the twentieth-century jungle, as 
his collateral ancestor, the rogue mammoth, was 
to the bleak tundras and mountain forests which 
were his home in the age of ice. 

It was their first sight of a mammoth— the 
great beasts were already a dwindling race in the 
times we tell of, the days of the Magdalenian men. 

Presently the silent watchers beheld the great 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner i6i 


panting hero get his breath and resume his travels. 
Ploughing, heaving, wading through the snow, 
he faded from sight and silence followed. 

“This may be just the luckiest thing in the 
world for us,” said Pul Yun, “or on the other 
hand, the unluckiest.” 

“ Um, yes,” assented the Master-Girl, thought- 
fully, peering forth upon the trail which the passing 
monster had left. “ If he is marching by himself 
we can take the same line, there is no losing that 
spoor. He knows the way, be sure of that, and 
where he can go we can follow — ^but, he leaves a 
blood-sign behind him, see! — ^If a party of tigers 
or of grizzlies strike that trail they will follow it 
up- on the chance of finding the bull in some drift. 
Or, those Little Moon braves might happen upon 
it, eh?” 

“ In any case we must lie close for to-night- 
no more dark marches for me 1 — and if the morn- 
ing shows that the bull is travelling unattended, 
we will use his trail.” 

“ I begin to think we shall do it after all ! ” 
smiled Deh-Yan, a little grimly, perhaps, for 
though she had kept a stiff mouth all day, the 
prospect was not encouraging, and she, at least, 


i 62 


The Master-Girl 


had no local knowledge to fall back upon even if 
the weather should take up and let them through. 

Fortune smiled upon the youngsters. Morning- 
light showed them the mammoth-track skinned 
over with a film of new snow unprinted by the 
spoor of beast or man. The fall had ceased, the 
drifts, ploughed through and pressed down b}^ 
the bulk and weight of their forerunner, gave easy 
passage; something in the contours of the ground 
seemed familiar to Pul Yun, who took the lead, 
silently, striding ahead with confidence, and 
presently, suddenly, the change came, the slope 
eased off, and the glory of the prospect before her 
rushed to the eyes of the girl who had been toiling 
up the last ascent bent beneath her load. She 
had never been so high before, nor overlooked 
such an extent of country. It caught her breath. 

“Oh, what wide place is this! — And all the 
hunting-grounds of our people?” 

“ Not the twentieth part of it I ” growled Pul 
Yun with a frown. “Have I not told thee how 
narrow our ground is, and that it grows nar- 
rower ? ” 

The Master-Girl sucked in her lips and re- 
shouldered her pack. “ Let us be getting down to 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 163 

them/' she said shortly, then, half to herself, 
“ Narrow or broad there shall be room enough for 
one Little Moon woman — and her bow! But, O, 
Pul Yun, when thou hast found thy folk, do not 
quite forget poor Deh-Yan." 

The man fell back a stride and went beside his 
wife for a while in silence, albeit the going was so 
good that speech had been easy whilst in Indian 
file. It came home to him how bitter is the lot 
of the newly-caught slave-wife among the older 
women of the tribe to whom her ignorance, youth, 
and foreignness are subjects for ill-natured merri- 
ment and opportunities for spite. 

“ There shall be no breaking-in for my wife," 
he said. “Listen! — To-morrow night thou shalt 
sit upon that bearskin in my chiefs presence. I 
have said it ! ” 

And all this fuss about crossing one of the lower 
cols! 

Wait, my friend. These young people had 
neither guides nor porters, nor maps, compass nor 
rope, nor ice-axes, nor well nailed, water-tight 
boots, appointments which make a fairly simple 
thing of what were otherwise a perilous feat. 
Moreover this was very early in the season, a time 


164 


The Master-Girl 


of year when every week makes a difference. The 
writer of this veracious history of the Old Time 
has himself seen the farm folk in a Pyrenean glen 
leave their hay to run shouting at the first tourist 
of the season who had news of their friends on 
the other side of the pass. — And that was in 
May. 

Nor were the Alps of that Old Time just as we 
see them to-day. I grant you they had come 
down in the world since their first glorious Hima- 
layan youth ; they no longer towered thirty, thirty- 
five thousand feet above the sub-tropical terai 
interspersed with its chain of salt lakes which we 
now know as the Mediterranean. The worst of 
the Great Ice Age was over, that grievous time 
when half the waters of the oceans were piled in a 
solid cap around the northern pole, a cap which 
extended southward in such sort that in Britain 
everything north of the Thames, and upon the 
mainland all that is now Germany and Austria, 
was sealed down beneath a solid sheet which was 
not melted for twenty thousand years on end. 
During this time, and for long after the worst of 
it was over, the Alps and the Tyrol were in process 
of being ground down to something approaching 


The Flitting, and the Forerunner 165 

what we see to-day. Their soaring peaks had 
arrested the cloud-systems of central Europe, and 
turned France into an arid steppe, the grazing- 
ground of countless herds of wild horse and gazelle, 
the clouds had deposited themselves in snow, the 
hoarded snows had ground down the sides of the 
giants, pared away their summits, and crawled out 
half across Lombardy in glaciers, which, when they 
finally receded, left trails of rubbish thirty miles 
long, spoils filched from the heights behind 
them. 

The worst of this was over. The Rhone Glacier 
had dwindled somewhat, but still blocked the 
Wallis. For many generations the shores of the 
Mediterranean had been peopled in winter by 
tribes which had each its summer hunting quarters 
in this or that glen of the hinterland ; tribes which 
had but little knowledge of, and no intercourse 
with, the people upon the southern side of the 
chain in the glens which feed the headwaters of 
the Po. 

How should they have had? — I am telling a 
tale of the long ago; much water has run under 
the bridges since, both those of Avignon and 
those of Padua, and every gallon of it brought 


i66 


The Master-Girl 


down something from the southern Alps; hence, as 
nothing rolls uphill, the passes century by century 
have been growing lower than they were when 
our two youngsters essayed their adventure. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE HOMECOMING 

IT was evening; the men of the Sun -disc Clan 
' had returned from their hunting and fishing. 
The women and children were squatted about the 
fires. A clear, peculiar outcry broke from the 
girl in the tree-top, the watch-woman; just such 
a cry comes from the sentinel bird of a flock of 
feeding wild-fowl. The whole community was 
upon its feet in a moment, peering under arched 
hands. 

Afar off against the yellow side of a dry gully 
of the foothills which arose between the last of 
the chestnut forest and the first of the spruce were 
to be descried a couple of moving specks. 

They, whoever they might be, were miles away: 
made visible for a moment by the chance of their 
crossing a bare rock-face which had caught the 
last of the sunlight, thrown up distinctly against 

this ruddy yellow background and defined by the 
167 


The Master-Girl 


1 68 

magical clearness of an open sunset following a 
day of rain. 

The braves handled their assegais awaiting the 
word of the Old Chief, a ring-man who had taken 
his first scalp forty years before and wore the neck- 
lace of five bear’s claws which testified to partici- 
pation in a later and yet sterner fight. He gave no 
order and kept his eyes upon the moving specks. 

These had dipped into a hollow. “ They have 
seen our smokes,” said he. “If they are friends 
they will come right on, if they are unfriends they 
will not show again and the young men must deal 
with them to-night.” 

“Who but unfriends would come from that 
side? ” asked a very tall young brave. There was 
a touch of covert insolence in the tone although 
the question was natural enough. 

The speaker was a person of some consideration, 
for when he spoke others held their peace and 
listened (watching still, be sure),— he was one 
Honk- Ah, a great-nephew of the Old Chief, a man 
of notable activity and more ambition ; one who 
aspired to the deputy chieftainship; an aspiration 
which had been kept in check for two years past 
by the presence of his cousin Pul Yun, a brave 


The Homecoming 169 

equally active and more popular, less subject to 
fits of disfiguring passion; a man marked out for 
leadership as well by his birth — ^being grandson 
to the Chief regnant — as by his qualities. 

But Pul Yun had been absent more than six 
moons, and during the past winter, as the Old 
Chief grew stiffer with the rheumatism which is 
the worst evil of the Northern savage, more 
dreaded than most forms of death, this youngster 
had waxed insolent at times; each recurring attack 
of lumbago might be the last, the one which would 
tie the old leader into his final knot, reducing him 
to a helpless, querulous cripple, and leaving the 
chieftainship open to the bravest and strongest 
man of his race. 

The Chief ignored the question, he was at gaze : 
yes, the strangers had come into view again, were 
holding a right line towards the camp-smokes, 
there was no affectation of concealment, no ruse. 
Who might they be ? 

Said the sentinel-girl at length, “ These are two 
braves, for they go side by side at times. One is 
shorter than the other by a head. Both are carry- 
ing something, — spears, I think, — and other things 
— robes.’' 


170 


The Master-Girl 


Said the Old Chief’s Head Wife in the spirit of 
prophecy, “ It is my grandson ! ” 

“ And the little one, the other? ” asked Honk- Ah, 
raising a doubt which no one was as yet in a posi- 
tion to allay. 

There is but little twilight south of the Alps: 
it was in a thick green dusk that the all-but-given- 
up Pul Yun strode back into camp with his shorter 
companion going beside him as an equal and a 
friend goes. No man of their tribe this; — who 
then ? — a slave? No — a squaw! 

The two, stepping out strongly (they had kept a 
trot for the avenue) , made straight for the teepee 
of the Old Chief, and saluted the father of the 
tribe before exchanging a word with any. They 
also saluted the Head Wife, some word of petition 
and consent passed in dumb show, the skin that 
hung over the entrance was shifted, in they went, 
and the show was over. 

But not the talk. It has been said that the old 
English manorial system assumed that every per- 
son in the village was intimately acquainted with 
the habits, business, and doings of every other 
person in the village (one might assume the same 
of villagers to-day with but little injustice) . This 


The Homecoming 171 

rule held among those earlier communities from 
which the mediaeval Englishman was remotely 
descended. Everybody was enormously and un- 
blushingly inquisitive. Why should he not be? 
When his body was satisfied he had nothing else 
to think about save the goings-on of his comrades. 
Hence he (and she) knew to a nicety the precise 
distance which so-and-so could jump, or swim, or 
throw; knew the last, least intimate fact about the 
bodies and minds, the personal peculiarities and 
habits of each and of all of the tribe, for — ^and 
bear this in mind, ye who travel in tubes and have 
the day mapped out and guarded for you — 
ignorance of some small particular might at any 
moment cost life itself. 

Your savage is incessantly hunting and being 
hunted. At any moment in his day his dinner 
may jump up in front of him and run away. At 
any moment a huge tawny cat may claim him for 
her meal. At any moment he may find a spear 
sticking in the calf of his leg. Such possibilities 
are calculated to develop the faculty of attention : 
from his childhood up he is trained by the hard 
facts of his life to be as observant as a magpie and 
as pertinaciously inquisitive as a dog. 


172 


The Master-Girl 


And this, methinks, is the place to introduce, an 
I durst, an excursus upon the Decay of Curiosity, 
a fine and tempting subject. There can be no sort 
of doubt that this is one of the Vanishing Instincts 
(the senses of locality and smell are others) . The 
adult male European has very little curiosity, if 
of a fairly good stock and breeding, none at all. 
His wife, her maid, and the children of both sexes 
have traces of the faculty more or less pronounced 
as being some degrees nearer to the savage. 
(I prithee madam, thump me not, I speak but the 
naked truth !) If the antique instinct reappears at 
intervals, as in Spy-manias, Dreyfus-obsessions, 
and what-not, in modern France, it is less terrible 
than in that recent past which saw their Law of 
Suspects and our Popish Plot, and earlier Witch- 
baitings. Across the Atlantic the defect is less 
noticeable, indeed one of the less endearing char- 
acteristics of Cousin Jonathan is that insatiable 
and unabashed curiosity which, whether it make 
for righteousness or no, is the making of the 
Yellow Press. 

With us English the primaeval safeguard has 
almost lapsed. We pride ourselves upon an 
incurious optimism, the outcome of urban sur- 


The Homecoming 173 

roundings and long internal peace. Are they 
yelling murder next door ? Let them yell, ’t is no 
affair of ours; it does n’t do to interfere — leave it 
to the police. We have fifty little apothegms to 
excuse our cowardice or sloth. It has come to 
this, that every time we find ourselves at war (we 
are still somewhat pugnacious), it takes the 
average man of us from six to twelve months to 
get himself back into the sensitively-apprehensive, 
warily-cautious skin of his forefather to whom a 
condition of warfare was normal, who carried a 
weapon as we carry an umbrella and distrusted 
every bush. Some of His Majesty’s forces never 
do regain a reasonable and saving curiosity ; 
middle-aged general officers, especially those who 
have hung about Windsor and done much review- 
ing, practically never. This sort go into action 
wearing white plumes, and insist upon being 
followed by a mounted orderly with a red-and- 
white guidon upon his lance. These are they who 
throw six shells at a wooded height at five miles’ 
range and pronounce it “unoccupied” ; who excuse 
outpost duty on Christmas Eve “ as a treat to the 
men ” ; who reduce their superiors to despair, their 
subordinates to stupor, the operations to a stand- 


174 


The Master-Girl 


still; and who, when sent home as incapable, 
arouse society and the Houses upon their noble 
behalf, and assure the smoking-rooms of the clubs 
that the Service is ruined. 

Many a town-bred private is in his own way as 
deficient : he makes haste to lose his regiment upon 
the march, also himself; then, if it be night, in 
place of effacing himself and using his wits and his 
ears, he will strike a match, and the better to 
advertise his presence, sings for company, being a 
secret believer in “things in the dark,” but an ar- 
rant agnostic as to the “hen’my bein’ hanywheres 
abart. ” Thus poor Tommy knows not that doom 
hath gone forth until he finds himself being held 
down and vivisected by the Afridi knife ; or, with 
better luck, stripped by a Dutchman of every rag 
that covers him. 

All which makes most unpleasant reading, but, 
I put it to you, is it not true? 

Agreed then, we have pretty well parted with 
the acute and rational curiosity which was the 
first armour of our race. 

But the Sun-disc folk had it in a highly special- 
ised form, and by the time that that deerskin por- 
tihe had ceased swinging behind the newcomers, 


The Homecoming 175 

they had noticed much, and had actually deduced 
a good deal of the recent histories of Pul Yun and 
his companion, from a stick here and a bundle 
there, a limp and a side-glance, momentary im- 
pressions in the dusk. 

“ He goes short upon his left leg, and it is no 
strain,” said Honk- Ah. 

“ He has not gone short of meat, — see how 
heavy he is! Who ever saw a brave come home 
from a winter-hunting, or a wife-hunting in such 
case ? La, we were worn away to sinew and bone 
at our last war-party; but, he — I” said an older 
man, a man of experience, with appropriate 
gesture. 

“ But his squaw ! ” said the women ; “ to let the 
Thing walk beside him! — and to hold her head 
up so! Why, when my man brought me into 
camp my hands were tied behind my back ! ” 

“And mine,” said another, “and my head was 
broken too, for my man stands no nonsense, I tell 
you ! ” 

“ A broken head, ” laughed a third. “ It was nigh 
a broken back in my case. I mind me he laded 
me down with every single thing he owned and 
strutted before me like a blackcock in lekking 


176 


The Master-Girl 


time ! Oh but was n^t I proud of him ! Fine and 
mannish he looked when I could get a peep at 
him, for my head was bent to my knees with my 
load and the sweat was running into my eyes, I 
tell you! Ha!’' The speaker laughed at the 
remembrance, just as a prefect chuckles over the 
lammings he took when a fag. 

“ Eh, but what in the world will this mean ? ” 
cried all together. “ He has divided the loads, and 
she was carrying — whatl — It can never be a bear- 
skin, the thing is plainly impossible. And — ^look 
at those silly bags of little feather-ended sticks ! and 
the long ash-sticks! — -What foolishness is this?” 

“The young chief is no fool.” 

“They walked well, anyhow.” 

“ Pride, mere pride, — ^they were ready to drop. 
Could not ye see as much? Think, they are in 
full winter dress: heavy deerskin leggings and 
karosses and all ; 't is plain they have come from 
high up, somewhere — not over the pass, that is 
impossible for another three moons yet ; they will 
have felt the heat cruelly all day.” 

“A likely-looking girl, — a Little-Moon girl by 
her gait and colour, — ^but where can he have 
picked her up? — and where has he been all this 


The Homecoming 177 

while ? A brave can’t live upon snow, and he has 
lived well, and upon an enemy’s ground. Wah, 
Pul Yun is a wise man in some ways, — but a fool 
in others. He must be mad to set so much by an 
unproved squaw.” 

“ He has had six months of her in my view,” 
said an old woman, “ and, right or wrong. Pul Yun 
ever knew his own mind.” 

“ She has bewitched him — ^he is mad, mad ! ” 
muttered Honk- Ah morosely, who saw his deputy- 
chieftainship slipping through his fingers after 
seeming safe in hand. The man was not a 
politic man (from the modern standpoint he 
was but a youth), he was a jealous fellow and 
wont to strike first. It seemed to him that this 
was his opportunity. He loafed around talking to 
those whom he believed to be in his interest, in 
undertones at first , then more loudly. “ Who is 
she? — a Little Moon? But that story will not 
do, for there are none of that tribe on this side of 
the ranges, and he cannot have passed the ranges 
this spring. Where has Pul Yun been?” 

This was Mystery the First, an offence in itself 
in a community which has the right to know 
the most intimate facts of the life of each of its 


x 78 


The Master-Girl 


members. Mystery breeds suspicion and sus- 
picion leads up to distrust and hate. But in the 
heart of Honk- Ah hate was already full grown. 

“ There is something here that the tribe should 
know ” ; he spoke aloud and his voice carried far. 
“ It seems to us that the Sun-Folk should be told, 
and told this night, where a brave has been har- 
bouring who has been away, and on an enemy’s 
grounds, for six moons.” 

“Also,” said a young blood who was of Honk- 
Ah’s hunting party, “we would see more of this 
squaw whom he brings into camp, — or who brings 
him.” A laugh. “ Our brother Pul Yun went forth 
for a wife” (the word had the secondary mean- 
ing of female slave) , “ but has come back with a 
master.” More laughter. 

The silence within the Old Chief’s teepee was 
unbroken for a while, and when the hanging 
portibre moved it was shifted with the utmost 
deliberation. The Old Chief himself came forth 
followed by Pul Yun. The elder spoke. 

“ My young men are noisy to-night. It is not 
good. My grandson has brought home a wife. 
He has done well. I say it. Is my nephew’s 
heart black because he has no wife ? The passes 


The Homecoming 179 

were open last autumn for him as for my grandson. 
Let him make his heart white or go forth upon his 
wife-hunting so soon as he chooses.'' 

“The passes are not open — " interposed Honk- 
Ah insolently. 

“The passes are open to a brave with a big 
heart, — or for the matter of that to a brave with 
a squaw’s heaid^,” riposted the Old Chief severely. 
“ My grandson crossed yesterday; his wife crossed 
with him.” 

There was silence, an astounded silence. Honk- 
Ah felt himself slipping : he must make a push for 
it. He spoke. 

“We do not believe — '' he began, but the Old 
Chief cut him short : 

“ I believe, and that is enough for my people. 
And, listen to me, Honk-Ah, and you who side 
with him, for I know what is in your hearts : this 
thing shall come to a head, it shall cease, and 
at once. My grandson Pul Yun was War-Chief 
when he went forth. Is he weaker, or less brave, 
or less cunning since he has returned ? ” 

There were mutterings in the darkness. Pul 
Yun stepped to the front and spoke; very gently 
he spoke, but they knew him. 


i8o 


The Master-Girl 


“ It is two years since I beat my cousin at the 
spear-throwing. It has always been the law 
that one trial is enough. The tribe cannot be 
always changing its War-Chief. But I will put 
the law out of the question for once, for it is not 
well that the Sun-Folk should be under a War- 
Chief who is weak of hand, or whom they think 
is weak of hand. The matter shall be retried. 
At sunrise to-morrow, as soon as there is full light, 
let Honk- Ah be ready with his spears and I will be 
ready with mine. And the man of us two who can 
throw farthest, and make his point go deepest, 
he shall be War-Chief. I have said.’’ 

“ It is good,” assented Honk-Ah, who had got 
what he was playing up for, an early trial. 

The deerskin shook, the Old Chief and Pul Yun 
had returned to the teepee. The knot of mutineers 
moved slowly off conversing in muttered under- 
tones. 

“That is a point to me,” said Honk-Ah. “ He 
is fat, he is slow. He was sweating as he marched 
in, I saw it. And, he carried no spears. I know 
every assegai of mine by name, and they know 
me. To-morrow I win!” 


CHAPTER X 


THE SPEAR-THROWING 

'^HE scene with which the last chapter closed 
^ had come as a not unwelcome interruption 
to a family explanation which had been in pro- 
gress within the deerskin hangings of the Old 
Chief's teepee. 

A mother-in-law may be a delightful person or 
the reverse. The difficulties and temptations 
which beset her position are of no modern creation. 
Are there not ancient wheezes upon this topic in 
Greek anthologies ? I doubt not that these hoary 
japes were in their day and generation rehashes 
of Mykenaean jibes still more venerable, for under 
given circumstances we humans act alike all the 
world over, and there is no valid reason for as- 
suming that our behaviours and misbehaviours 
have varied to any great extent during the past 
hundred thousand years. 

Listen to a case in point. A friend of mine with 

l8i 


i 82 


The Master-Girl 


a faculty for getting into and out of places the most 
tight and remote once found himself for a whole 
month dependent upon the hospitality of an 
African tribe so degraded as to have lost (if it had 
ever possessed) the art of hut-building. These 
simple aborigines erected little shelters of small 
brushwood to windward and slept thereunder. 
They wore no garments, not even the most 
exiguous. A rough man, a coarse man, in such 
company would have discerned nothing but the 
brutality which he brought with him. He would 
have mishandled the situation from the first, and 
having presently reduced his position to an im- 
possibility, would have taken himself off and 
returned (with luck) to civilisation with a story of 
beastly savages, less than half human, no better 
than the dog-faced baboons of the cliffs. 

Not so my friend, who, being an English gentle- 
man of the best type, had no difficulty in adapting 
himself to the necessities of a novel situation. He 
took to his hosts, they reciprocated, and he en- 
joyed the unique opportunity of being admitted 
to the inner life of a singular and interesting 
community. He watched and remembered. 
Among other matters he observed that the ladies 


The Spear-Throwing 183 

of this little people had several of the habits, manner- 
isms, and small personal traits of their sisters in 
good society. 

Back to my tale. One of the little ways of 
mothers-in-law, even of mothers-in-law of family, 
is to assume a large degree of ignorance upon the 
part of the bride, and to gently (but firmly) 
initiate her into the right ways of doing things, 
and the relative positions and status of the persons 
of her new circle. I put it diplomatically. I have 
not used the word “encroach.’^ I have known a 
bride return from her honeymoon to find all 
her bride-cake cut up and distributed. 

But, conceive the claims of a grandmother-in- 
law, who was also Head Wife of the Chief Regnant, 
a woman of advanced years, of the firmest charac- 
ter, and not unaccustomed to implicit obedience. 

This old lady was a rather terrible old lady, and 
no fool. She detected a Little Moon woman at a 
glance, as she was likely to do, being a Little Moon 
woman herself who had come over the pass forty 
years before with her elbows shackled and a bruise 
upon the top of her head as big as a fresh-water 
mussel. Hence a woman of the clan into which 
she had been born was a quite unmysterious 


184 


The Master-Girl 


creature, about which she had, as she conceived, 
nothing to learn. She was for undertaking the 
usual breaking-in forthwith. 

But her grandson Pul Yun would have none of 
it. Mildly, but with absolute decision, he post- 
poned the business. “No, my wife shall sit in 
my presence, — yes, at my desire. Also, she shall 
eat with me. It is unusual, I admit, but such is 
our rule. You do not understand? That too 
I admit. I am hoping to make things plain pre- 
sently, but we must start fair, start as we mean to 
go on. In one word my wife is a Very Great 
Medicine. I have brought her a long way 
through deep snow, she is tired. I do not wish 
her to stand any more to-night, or answer ques- 
tions. To-morrow perhaps. In the meantime, 
feel this — ” the man extended his leg. “ It was 
broken, as thou canst feel; she — my wife there — 
mended it. I lay more than a whole moon in her 
hands. She found me so ; she left her tribe to come 
to me; she made me a sound man, as thou canst 
see. It was great medicine.” 

“ It was great medicine,” murmured the Old 
Chief, critically fingering the reunited bone. 
The eyes of the Head Wife snapped; seldom did a 


The Spear-Throwing 185 

broken leg come so straight as this, but she would 
admit nothing. Pul Yun was speaking. 

“ That was once, but she has saved my life three 
times since in battle. I say it. Do not ask how 
to-night. Yes, this is a bearskin, the pelt of a 
very great man-bear, — a cave grizzly. I have 
never seen a greater, but I have seen but few. 
Possibly my Chief, who has seen and handled 
several bears, has seen a greater man-bear than 
this ? ” 

The Old Chief watched the unrolling of the huge 
skin and shook his head; no, he had never seen one 
as wide or so long : it was immense ; a winter coat, 
too ; it was the finest skin he had ever handled. 

“ I did not kill this bear,” said his grandson after 
a dramatic pause. 

It was at this juncture that the challenge from 
without brought these explanations temporarily 
to a close, and when the men re-entered the tee- 
pee both felt that they had more momentous 
matter in hand than the relative positions of the 
ladies. 

Said the Old Chief, “ Thou art in for it now. I 
would have warned thee hadst thou not spoken so 
fast. My nephew has a bad heart. While thou 


i86 


The Master-Girl 


wast absent he has been sucking away from me the 
hearts of my young men. Some he has beaten, 
and some he has bought, and some he has talked 
over. But I have kept the place warm for thee. 
I still dreamed of thy homecoming. Never 
earnest thou to me in sleep as thou wouldst have 
come hadst thou been dead. But this challenge, 
and thy taking of it up, is a heavy matter. Honk- 
Ah has come on in his spear-throwing. And he 
has great store of excellent weapons, well-handled, 
well-headed, well-balanced. And where are 
thine ? Thou hast come home empty-handed. It 
is not well. But, since thou hast spoken, I see no 
way out of a retrial.” 

“ Nor I, Chief,” said Pul Yun, making low and 
dutiful obeisance, for the old man’s grave, slow, 
tones failed to hide a heart shaken by the presence 
of long-expected and now imminent calamity; 
his grandson would show courage enough for both ; 
“ Nor would I put it off for a day. Leave my wife 
and me to look over our weapons. All will go 
as thou wouldst wish.” 

And to this the Old Chief listened with a grunt, a 
somewhat weak grunt, as his grandson thought. 
The Head Wife was harder to satisfy, a matter 


i87 


The Spear-Throwing 

which Pul Yun must take upon himself, as he 
presently discovered, for her husband sat mute, let- 
ting her nag and question whilst Deh-Yan worked 
in silence and with despatch. What had come 
to the Old Chief ? He had not been wont to be so 
acquiescent. His grandson turned it over in his 
mind, nor found any solution, being unacquainted 
with the premonitory symptoms of age, the in- 
disposition to take a strong line because inward 
warnings forbid its being followed up effectively. 
There were few old men among the Sun-Folk. 
The whole generation between the Old Chief and 
the youth of the tribe had perished in a disastrous 
fight with their southern neighbours some years 
before, a blow which had necessitated a prompt 
removal from the disputed hunting-grounds and 
the stone-quarry, the object of the battle. It was 
there that the fathers of Pul Yun and his cousin 
had fallen. The Sun-Men, in fact, had been a 
dwindling clan for nearly two generations, always 
liable to be cut off from their supplies of two 
necessities, weapon-stone and wives, neither of 
which could they obtain save at undue risks. Now 
with savages to dwindle is the precursory process 
of death. The braves knew this and were restless. 


i88 


The Master-Girl 


So, during the hard weather of the past winter, 
the feeling among the young warriors of the tribe 
had been gathering to a head that a younger and 
more active Chief was needed. There is small re- 
verence for age among the lowest savages. The 
Eskimos, nearest of existing races to the Old-Stone 
men of whom we are speaking, give little deference 
to the grey head and the weak hand. Here, among 
the Sun-Men, the process of supersession was 
beginning — ^the new leaf was pushing off the 
old. 

“ It seems to me,” murmured Deh-Yan to her 
husband, “ it seems to me that on this side of the 
ranges also the young bulls are making ready to 
drive an old tusker from the herd.” Pul Yun 
grunted, testing the point of an arrow with his 
thumb. 

But, although he had said nothing. Pul Yun's 
eyes and mind were at work, and the impression 
of instability, of a new spirit among his people 
since he had last been with them, and of impending 
and far-reaching changes lay down with him and 
arose with him next morning ; and was promptly 
confirmed; for his rival and his rival’s backers 
had been up and out betimes, the lists were al- 


The Spear-Throwing 189 

ready set and the marks fixed, a matter which was 
the business of the Chief alone. 

The Old Chief saw what had been done and 
nodded acquiescence. It might be that the 
sceptre was passing from him. He would have one 
more fight for it, but the fight should be upon 
ground of his own choosing. He was too great- 
minded to quibble over trifles, and in truth the 
lists were well-set and the marks as truly and 
fairly fixed as he could have desired. 

None disputed his position as referee. 

The contest would be quite the most solemn and 
momentous, as well as the greatest sporting event 
that had occurred within the memories of the 
tribe. Honk- Ah, who had been runner-up for the 
war-chieftainship for two years past, as the Old 
Chief had said had come on in his spear-throwing 
during the winter, and was believed to have over- 
cast his cousin’s best records. If he should suc- 
ceed to-day it was possible that he would kill 
two birds with one stone — make a sudden snatch 
at the head-chieftaincy of the tribe, and that his 
backing of young braves might support him. 

If this occurred, if it came to blows, how would 
the matter go ? The Old Chief asked himself the 


The Master-Girl 


190 

question, but got no answer. Of one thing only he 
was assured, winning or losing he would die a 
Chief. 

The mark was a badger-skin kaross fixed upon 
a wicker fish-trap and set upon a stake as high as a 
man. The distance was extreme, as Pul Yun saw 
at a glance. Forty-five strides is a big, a very big 
throw with an assegai, if the mark is to be hit and 
penetrated. As a mere cast, an exhibition of 
distance-throwing, a man might do more. But 
this was no fancy-work: by the terms of the wager 
the mark was to be not merely hit but pierced. 
A badger's pelt is long in the hair; the skin is of 
the thickest and toughest of forest trophies. 
Pul Yun nodded. 

“ My cousin has set himself a difficult mark : it 
is small and it is not easy to pierce. My cousin 
has plainly improved in his spear-practice since 
I have been away. Let him begin the play.” 

The man addressed. Honk- Ah, a lithe, tall 
brave, naked except for his breech-clout, arose 
from his heels carrying three spears. 

“ Shall it be a matter of three spears at this 
range?” he asked. 

“Three will be sufficient,” replied Pul Yun, 


The Spear-Throwing 191 

“and he whose points go farthest through the 
peltry shall be adjudged winner.” 

“ I am judge,” grunted the Old Chief. 

“ Without doubt, my father ! ” assented Pul Yun. 
Honk- Ah said nothing ; he was balancing a spear 
as he walked to the throwing crease. 

Five paces he passed beyond it, turned upon his 
heel, paused, measured his distance with his eye 
from old habit, arose upon his toes, pranced up 
to his crease with hand and arm at their utmost 
stretch, shook and flung his assegai. 

All eyes followed the weapon; its grey chert 
head travelled steady as a stone, its five feet of 
shaft rotating as it flew in such wise that its ex- 
tremity traversed a small circle. This was how 
a spear should be thrown, perfect form; how about 
the aim? The weapon completed its curve, 
pitched, struck, but did not satisfy the demands 
of the competition so completely as the thrower’s 
friends could have wished: the direction was 
better than good, but the elevation was ever so 
little too high: the weapon had struck the upper 
edge of the mark, the shaft swung over and drew 
the point. The spear lay upon the ground beyond 
its head towards the thrower, still it was a great 


192 


The Master-Girl 


th row . As every watcher knew , h ad the mark been 
a man that man would have taken a nasty woimd. 

The thrower, you may be sure, had followed the 
flight of his assegai no less critically. Without 
once taking his eye from the mark he took and 
weighed in hand the spear which he was to throw 
next, stepped lightly back, took distance, shook, 
ran, and threw. Nor was he below himself. This 
was better, as good as to direction, and as to 
elevation somewhat lower than the former. The 
head penetrated the lower edge of the skin and 
held, albeit the shaft drooped; thus much only it 
lacked of perfection, yet, there was not another 
man in the silent circle of spectators who could 
have done as well. The third and last was 
a truly fine performance: a centre, well driven 
home, it would have been impossible to better 
it. The spearman, his hands hanging by his 
sides, surveyed his work frowning slightly, as an 
expert does who has done well, but whose ambition 
was to have done better than well ; then he slowly 
raised his chin, folded his arms across his chest 
and turned to his cousin with the superb and 
natural scorn of the savage who has no tradition 
of restraint behind him. 


193 


The Spear-Throwing 

“Is that Honk-Ah’s best?” asked Pul Yun 
quietly, without rising from his heels. “Let my 
cousin take his time, the day is still young. Try 
three more throws, and again three more ; it may be 
that two of thy spears balanced ill, or thy arm 
was yet stiff from being lain upon. What? — thou 
satisfied? Wilt stand by these, nor ask for more, 
however the matter goes?” 

He ceased at a touch of the Old Chief's hand, 
and none too soon. Honk- Ah, a passionate and 
hasty fellow, was shaking with anger; he detested 
his cousin with a bitterness which surprised even 
himself. He had hated him when he thought him 
dead, and now that he had returned from the 
underworld, as it seemed, to snatch the prize from 
his grasp, his aversion went near to choking him. 
Whether Pul Yun spoke or was silent, sat or stood, 
he hated him; his least movement, or the absence 
of movement fed the hate which had been smoul- 
dering within him for a year, which had glowed in 
his bosom all night, and now had all but burst 
into flame. 

It was a full-blown flower of primitive jealousy. 
The Old Chief recognised the growth and inward- 
ly shivered; things might go ill yet. Let there 


194 The Master-Girl 

be no talk, let Pul Yun betake himself to his 
weapons. 

“If it must be, it must be,” remarked Pul Yun 
without enthusiasm. “But, look you, my brothers 
and friends, I am but a night and a day from the 
snows of the pass; three (or was it not four?) days 
and as many nights did I sit in a snow-cave wait- 
ing for the fall to stop. I have travelled through 
drifts as deep as my chin, and this upon the top of 
a broken leg. Yes, I lay for nigh two moons in a 
cave with a broken leg. Hence Pul Yun, who was 
approved your War-Chief two years ago, is not at 
his best this day. He has forgot his spear-throw- 
ing somewhat. It is four, nay, it is six moons 
since he threw a spear.” 

A shiver of astonishment ran around the circle, 
for this was giving the contest away before it was 
begun. Spear- throwing is an art which calls for 
constant and unremitting practice: the assegai- 
thrower no more than the violinist can lay aside 
his instrument for weeks and months at a time 
and resume it at will with his old facility. The 
listening tribesmen covered their mouths with their 
hands and smiled behind them; each man's eyes 
rolled on his fellows' seeking and finding compre- 


The Spear-Throwing 195 

hension. The thing was as good as settled. But 
Pul Yun had arisen to his feet and was still 
speaking. 

‘ ‘ I have brought back to camp no spears of our 
sort, for my arm is very fat and weak, much weaker 
than the arm of my wife here, (who will throw 
presently).” A laugh broke out, but fell, for he 
was grave and was still speaking. He had none of 
the marks of a madman about him; he was just 
the Pul Yun whom they had all known and loved, 
gentle of speech exceedingly, — yet his words, or 
some of them, were strange — ludicrous. 

“So I have made for myself little assegais, 
boys’ assegais”; whilst speaking he drew one from 
the long skin pouch which hung at his back and 
handed it to the Old Chief, who turned it end for 
end in his hand, and looked it over very critically, 
and passed it on to the elder nearest to him with 
an impassive face but a very shaken heart. The 
absurd little thing went slowly around the circle. 
None above the age of an uninitiated boy had ever 
handled its like. It reached Honk- Ah who dis- 
dained to touch it, smiling insolently, his game 
already won. 

“Yet, it seems I must do what I can,” said Pul 


196 


The Master-Girl 


Yun, sighing again,, “and if, by good luck, I can 
make these little-boys’ spears fly straighter and 
stick deeper than my cousin’s, what will ye say?” 

Said the grey Chief, “My son’s son, whilst thou 
hast been away we have had omens of change and 
of trouble. Our enemies, the White- Wolves and the 
men of the Lynx totem have begun to encroach 
yet more upon our hunting-grounds, they have 
taken game from our traps, they waylay and 
wound our young men hunting singly. We have 
given up lone hunting, we hunt in couples or 
three-somes. They, or we must move on. But 
it needs fighting to clear the matter. And — and — 
I am grown better at council than at the chase. 
Strong am I still, but I stiffen, and am slower of 
foot than my wont. The Sun-Men have always 
had a War-Chief who could lead them. The tribe, 
— the young men, are asking for one. Thy cousin 
claims the post. What can I say to thy question ? ” 

To Pill Yun’s thinking there was more than 
physical weakness in this appeal. He faced the old 
man silently but with a steady confidence in his 
eye which went some way to restore the senior’s 
shaken courage, who took fresh breath and went 
on. 


197 


The Spear-Throwing 

‘‘The spear, my son, is the only weapon, and the 
farther it is cast and the deeper it is driven the 
better the warrior. Yonder is the mark. Get 
thee to thy spears. I have spoken.’* 

The little dart was still travelling its round, 
exciting amazement, amusement, and curiosity as 
it went. It returned to Pill Yun; he examined 
its point and feather (the absurd little feather, 
fingered by so many, understood by him alone), 
all with an exasperating deliberation and gentle 
cheerfulness as of a man regaining his spirits. 
The tent-folds behind him shook and forth came 
the foreign woman, his wife, Deh-Yan, as he had 
been heard to address her, bringing in hand — 
what? — surely not more spears, for there were 
others in the skin pouch upon his back, yet she 
bore to him a staff, stouter, heavier, and longer 
than any assegai, and, whereas a well-made assegai 
is thickest three hands’ breadth behind the head 
and thence tapers both ways, this clumsy shaft 
was thickest in the middle. An impossible, 
headless weapon thought the tribe, craning to see. 

Pul Yun took the staff, tossed and caught it, 
shook it a little whilst the Little Moon woman 
unwound a stout cord of twisted sinew looped at 


198 


The Master-Girl 


either end. Watched intently by the tribe the 
man threaded both loops upon the staff, fitted the 
last to a notch at one end of it, which end he 
turned under and set his left foot upon; then, 
holding the staff erect and close to his left side he, 
gripping its upper end with his right hand, swiftly 
and strongly bent it over his knee and hip whilst 
with his left hand sliding the second loop to its 
resting-place in the second notch which was now 
close beside his chin. 

’T was done in a moment, and the thing stood 
confessed no weapon at all, but just a drilling-bow, 
an out-sized, clumsy tool. Honk-Ah led the 
laugh. 

But Pul Yun, unmoved and passively grave, was 
empt3dng at his feet the skin pouch aforesaid, and 
lo, there lay more boys* assegais, weak, light, and 
decked with feathers where no feathers should be. 
The laughter did not cease when the man chose 
three and approached the scratch thus armed, 
for the bow-drill which he carried his critics re- 
garded as a mere encumbrance, a thing as foreign 
to the business in hand as a fishing-line. Taking 
his stand upon the crease itself, and making no 
preparation for the usual run before throwing, the 


199 


The Spear-Throwing 

young chief gripped the bent bow-drill left-hand- 
edly by its midmost stoutest part, laid a dart across 
the wood, and his left forefinger over that dart; 
then, fitting a hitherto unnoticed notch in the end 
of that dart to the string, he gripped both dart and 
sinew, and drew both away from the bending wood 
whilst raising the whole apparatus with his ex- 
tended left hand. Back and back went his right 
hand, stiffly and more stiffly extended his left 
arm, until the chert head of the dart stuck out 
beyond the left thumb whilst the notched and 
feathered tail, still fast against the sinew-cord, 
was level with the man’s ear. Thus he stood, 
poised, tense, and silent for a breath; the last 
cackle of derisive laughter died; what did all this 
mean ? T wang — something hummed like the wings 
of the great fawn-coloured mountain- swift when 
he sweeps a beetle from a grass-blade close to one’s 
knee and is a hundred strides away before one 
knows what he has done. Pill Yun was standing 
exactly as he had stood before the sound, save that 
the string had escaped from his hand and the bow- 
drill had gone straight again. What had become 
of the dart? ’Twas gone, yet none had seen it 
go. At such close range, and from such a powerful 


200 


The Master-Girl 


how, an arrow travels nearly level and exceedingly 
fast. The eyes of the tribe, fixed upon the man, 
and awaiting the vehement action of the spear- 
thrower, had failed altogether to pursue the flight 
of the missile. 

“ Wah ! when is he going to throw ? ” “ Where 

has it gone ? ” “ When did he cast ?” ''How came 
it there f for lo, in the target beside the best 
spear of Honk- Ah stood the dart of Pul Yun, quite 
as well-centred and more deeply fixed. 

A buzz of subdued clamour arose and was 
instantly hushed, for the marksman’s second dart 
was in his hand, and again that queer, clumsy 
domestic implement, hitherto reserved for the 
girl who made fire, or the eye of a needle, was 
bending again. Twang ! — again that new, keen 
sound and all eyes jumped, and again failed to 
follow that unnaturally low, swift flight. They 
looked above it, looked where a spear would have 
been, and whilst they stared — thucki — a second 
dart was standing in the target, not a hand’s 
breadth away from the first, and as deeply im- 
bedded. 

Honk- Ah crammed his mouth full of his own 
fingers and bit them, but no one spoke. All 


201 


The Spear-Throwing 

edged a step nearer, and when the string hummed 
for the third time, and the final dart, driven 
straight and hard, stood between the other two, 
there was a deep gasp of half incredulous surprise. 

Savages are deeply and religiously conservative, 
and easily persuade themselves that their own way, 
though demonstrably the worse, is the right way. 
Did the landowners of England effusively fold 
Stephenson to their noble bosoms? His trains 
would interfere with their fox-hunting: so much 
they could see. Later they saw money in the thing 
and came into it with a rush. 

Now the Sun- Men were almost as conservative 
as the House of Peers in the day when the rocket 
was the last new thing; and there was nothing of 
lucre with which to commend this invention to 
their unwilling admiration. 

Alack, our race has moved with a pitiful 
slowness, and still moves locally and by jerks, 
and with such intermediate marking of time and 
retrogressions elsewhere. 

Hence it is not to be supposed that the Sun-Men 
acclaimed the first performances of the New 
Thing with shouts of joy. To the braves of the 
tribe it signified the success of a piece of woman’s 


202 


The Master-Girl 


gear. Their first impulse was to have none of it, 
to shout it down as foreign magic, certainly novel, 
probably impious, and no doubt offensive to their 
deity. Even the Old Chief, with all to gain by his 
grandson’s victory, was unenthusiastic. 

Were they more stupid than their descendants 
of a later day? I trow not. Let the reader judge. 
Once during England’s struggle with Napoleon 
was the chance offered to each antagonist to end 
the matter at a stroke. How did they take it? 
Joseph Manton laid his designs for rifled artillery 
before the Master of the Ordnance and was refused 
leave to manufacture guns capable of demolishing 
the ships, forts, and forces of France at long range. 
A few years later young Fulton explained to 
Bonaparte his plans for towing the wind-bound 
Boulogne fleet across the channel by steam. The 
hard, shallow grey eyes of the Corsican stared him 
down, ''IdMiste!'* and England was safe for* 
another century. 

Pul Yun had won, but the successful compet- 
itor’s three astonishing shots aroused suspicion 
in some, anger and jealousy in others. There were 
men present capable of surlily or passionately 
repudiating the fact. Honk-Ah did. He arose 


203 


The Spear-Throwing 

from his heels, flung out his hands, strutted, 
laughed derisively, indulged in gestures offensive 
and provocative, and walked towards the target. 

‘‘Stop!” cried the Old Chief, “let no man draw 
those spears.” 

Himself detaching the skin, he bore it around the 
circle of watching braves. There was no denying 
the evidence. Those three, small, bow-driven 
darts were in over their heads. A man so struck 
would hardly have lived out the day. 

Pul Yun, without vaunts, took the fact of his 
victory for granted, and, noting his backer’s 
reserve, came to the front. 

“I have just one little thing to ask,” said he, 
raising his hand, “a very little thing. It is that 
my cousin will now throw spears with my wife.” 

The listening tribe stared with open-mouthed 
amazement. The challenged man fairly bristled. 
To a brave such a proposal was an indelible insult. 
Yet Pul Yun’s manner was not insulting; nothing 
could be less provocative than the gentle, un- 
smiling simplicity of his mien. 

“A brave plays only with braves,” said the Old 
Chief, interpreting the challenged man’s rigid 
silence. 


204 


The Master-Girl 


Then, at a nod from her husband, Deh-Yan came 
from the curtained doorway of the wigwam. She 
was wearing the full spring-months’ working dress 
of a woman of the tribe, to wit, her own supple 
beauty hidden only from the waist to the knee by 
an apron of skins. 

There was nothing to remark in this, but what 
drew a murmur of amazement from the circle, a 
murmur which presently turned to scoffs and in- 
credulous laughter, was the bearskin which she 
bore upon her arm, and the collar of teeth and 
claws which encircled the ruddy symmetry of her 
throat. Sedately she spread the skin and took 
her stand upon it. She knew, none better, that 
this hour would be the making or the breaking 
of her man and herself, but she bore herself 
superbly. If her heart fluttered within her breast 
her mouth was hard and her eye steady. Silently 
she fingered the necklace and looked a question 
to her husband, who raised his hand. 

‘ ‘ Do you ask why my wife stands upon that bear- 
skin whilst I stand upon bare earth ? Do you ask 
why she, and not I, wears that necklace? Those 
are fair questions which I will answer presently. 
But, first, I too have a question to ask of you. 


205 


The Spear-Throwing 

‘Tf two go to the woods to hunt and a bear is 
killed by one of the two, who shall wear the spoils 
— he who did the killing or he who looked on ? 

‘ ‘ That is our case, my wife’s and mine. Whilst I 
lay with a broken leg-bone, that bear came like a 
lynx upon a wood-hen in a gin and thought to have 
made a meal of me. My wife was there ; she might 
have run for it, but she took spear in hand and 
killed that bear,” — he stooped and lifted one of the 
enormous paws of the hide. “At one thrust she 
killed that bear. He was very near to me, nearer 
than my cousin is now; he was upreared for the 
stroke; he was not a young bear, nor a brown 
bear, but a grizzly of the rocks; an old man 
grizzly, so my Chief says who knows more of bear 
than any of us; for myself I have never had much 
to do with bear of any sort, two, perchance, 
brown bears both — they fought well — did not they. 
Honk- Ah? But this was my first grizzly (he 
came near to being my last). We were in a cave, 
the three of us. I was sitting, with my leg stiff 
and weak, so — ” he was now upon the ground at 
D^h-Yan’s feet, acting the scene. “The grizzly 
came thus — ” he bounded from the earth, crawled, 
reared, pawed the air, impersonating the monster. 


2o6 


The Master-Girl 


“She — she here, my wife, — ^who was not attacked, 
who might have saved herself, — ^what did she? — 
What did she? — 1 ask!’' his voice rose to a shout. 
“What would my cousin have done?” It fell to a 
soft, penetrating tone, he spread his hands and 
bent towards Honk- Ah as though genuinely seek- 
ing an answer to his question, a question put with 
an air of suave simplicity which it was impossible 
to effectively resent . “My cousin would have done 
what my wife did, yes, he would have killed that 
grizzly, I see it in his eye ! — Thou wouldst have 
done just that, Honk-Ah!’' 

A stifled titter ran around the circle, for this was 
a home thrust. Honk-Ah had indeed, as Pul 
Yun had reminded him, been present at the hunt- 
ing of one of the two bears which had been slain 
by the Sun-Men during the past four years, but, 
by over-caution, or maladroitness, or sheer ill- 
luck, it had not fallen to him to distinguish him- 
self in that fight. All braves cannot be at their 
best upon all occasions, and that had not been one 
of Honk-Ah ’s days. The emergency which had 
found his cousin wanting had been one which had 
set the seal to Pul Yun's courage and address. 
Rivals before, the cousins had been rivals since. 


207 


The Spear-Throwing 

Pul Yun leading. The elders present perceived 
that their young War-Chief, not content with 
re-establishing his precedence, was bent upon 
inflicting a public humiliation upon his would-be 
supplanter; perceived, too, that he was probably 
aware of the plot which his timely return to his 
tribe had barely forestalled, and were wondering 
how the Honk- Ah party were taking it. 

These, as it happed, were taking the matter 
extremely well. They had fallen under the 
influence of Honk- Ah not for any love which they 
bore him, but because a leader of some sort was 
needful for the tribe at a critical juncture, and he, 
in default of Pul Yun, was the only possible man. 
Their former War-Chief had dropped upon them 
from the skies, and albeit they had wavered 
in their allegiance, and some of them had talked 
big overnight, with the instability of the savage 
(who, like a boy, is merely a man in the making, 
fickle and easily moved to good or evil) , they were 
ready to return to duty. The result of the spear- 
throwing had shaken them, but this exhibition of 
Pill Yun’s adroit eloquence had completed their 
reconversion, not to the new weapon but to the 
old comrade. 


2o8 


The Master-Girl 


Honk- Ah was upon his feet; he had heard the 
titter of the women behind him, he had looked 
towards one and another of his chosen friends and 
followers but had failed in finding an answering 
eye, he felt himself slipping; the situation called for 
instant action, he took it with a rush — there was 
no finesse about Honk-Ah. He struck his hardest 
at his opponent’s weakest spot, — this tale was too 
wonderful for belief. He appealed to the experi- 
ence of the Old Chief and the half-dozen elders; 
he claimed as a brave to know something, he and 
his contemporaries had seen a bear or two die, but 
they had died hard, had charged home a dozen 
times; had run, when it came to running, for a 
long way; had stood at bay under a storm of spears 
for half a day; it had taken every man of the 
hunting party all that he knew to finish the fight 
with a whole skin. Yet, this foreign woman, 
forsooth, had killed her bear, an old man grizzly 
(there was no getting over that skin), with a 
casual poke with one — one — of her people’s stupid 
little darts. Absurd! That the bear had died 
was evident — even bears cannot live for ever: but 
how had he died? — In a pit? or under a down- 
fall? or by a chance-fallen rock, perhaps? — Such 


209 


The Spear-Throwing 

things did happen to bears as to men, he supposed. 
And doubtless this had befallen whilst Pul Yun lay 
sick, and — ^well — it was only too plain that his 
cousin had been very sick indeed, both in his feet 
and in his head, for, in a word, this foreign woman 
had fooled him.” 

Pul Yun heard him to an end with grave pa- 
tience, then turning to D^h-Yan, who was now 
quivering with hard-pent excitement, he nodded. 
The girl retired to the wigwam and was presently 
back again, no longer wearing the bear’s trophies, 
but re-arrayed in a triple necklace of human teeth 
which encircled her brown throat in shining rows, 
whilst three scalps swung and dangled from her 
waistband. 

A low cry of utter wonder broke from the circle 
of spectators, and rose louder as, in obedience to 
her husband’s eye, she made the circuit of the ring, 
exhibiting with a sort of shy bravado to the 
astonished braves these undreamed-of wonders. 
Scalps ? — these were not the scalps of old men or 
of women, but of topknotted braves. The teeth, 
too, were not milk-teeth, but the unworn, fully 
fanged grinders of men. She returned to her 
place upon the bearskin pursued by admiring 


14 


210 


The Master-Girl 


glances. All kept silence ; not even Honk- Ah had 
any remarks to offer, or explanations to suggest. 
Pul Yun arose again. 

“My cousin is hard to satisfy. A brave who 
has killed his bear in single fight is still unworthy 
to meet my cousin. I ask my Chief, I ask myself 
and you — ^nay, I will ask my cousin — Who is 
worthy to meet so great a warrior as Honk- Ah? 

“And, here is my answer!*’ He turned to his 
wife. “Behold my squaw — Deh-Yan is her name; 
she is wearing the scalps of three braves; they were 
strong braves and great runners, a winter war- 
party (Gow-Loo, Pongu, and Low-Mah were their 
names). They were well-armed, behold their 
axes and knives! They ambushed my wife, set 
upon her as she bent over a trap; so much did I 
see of the fight with these eyes, looking from the 
cave where I lay foot-fast. Did she fly screaming 
to me? — No, she thought for me; she led them 
away from our cave, a long chase, oh, a hard 
chase ! one whole day. But this I cannot speak of 
particularly for I did not see it. Late that night 
she returned to me with these scalps. They were 
fresh then, new-stript. Does my cousin, who 
speaks of' downfalls and pits, think that my 


2II 


The Spear-Throwing 

squaw took all three braves in a pit at one running? 
In a hopo, say, like a herd of horses? Does he 
think in his heart that these young warriors gave 
their hair and their teeth to a girl for love?” The 
speaker laughed merrily at the idea, and, save 
Honk- Ah, every one within hearing laughed with 
him; he stilled the merriment with upraised hand 
and turned to his antagonist. 

Once again I ask him whether he will play at 
the spear-throwing with this brave, my squaw?” 

The speaker paused for a reply, and in the 
silence which followed braves and women alike 
craned for a better view of the face of the man 
whom he chaUenged, who was squatting upon his 
heels glowering upon his rival, the fingers of his 
throwing-hand tightening, slackening, and again 
tightening around the shaft of his assegai. 

An answer of some sort he must make, but, what 
answer would pass? 

Whilst he debated, the foreign woman stooped, 
took her husband’s bow from the ground, chose her 
a single dart, and approached the crease. She 
turned and scrutinised the mark, the creel now 
denuded of the badger’s skin. The stake upon 
which it htmg protruded through the wicker for 


212 


The Master-Girl 


the length of half an arm. Watched by all she 
stood serenely at gaze, then threw up her chin and 
called to a woman at the other end of the lists. 

“O woman, there! — ^thou with the papoose! — 
I want a mark. Wilt hang something small, 
say a moccasin, upon the top of that stake? I 
thank thee, sister!” 

A gust of astonished laughter arose, what fool- 
ery, what bravado was this ? — There hung a child's 
mitten, an impossible mark, such as no brave had 
ever set for himself or for his rival. Again arose 
the clear, mellow, woman's voice, using their own 
tongue with just a touch or two of foreignness 
in its intonations, — 

“O my father and chief, may I throw at this 
mark? — I will throw but once.'' 

The Old Chief turned first to Honk-Ah, but the 
man sat mute and glum as though the business 
were no concern of his. Then to the woman he 
turned and nodded assent: doubting as did the 
rest. Pul Yun excepted. 

D^h-Yan fitted aiTow to string and half bent the 
great bow, still keeping her eye upon the tiny 
mark, then with a small sweet laugh she tripped 
back from the throwing-crease five full strides, drew 


213 


The Spear-Throwing 

swiftly and to the ear, and as swiftly loosed. 
Twang! the cord sang shrill in the morning air, 
the arrow sped, and a whoop of sheer delight broke 
from the watching tribe, for the shaft had struck 
the mitten full, had pierced and transfixed it. 
The archer had watched the flight of her shaft with 
a hard bright eye, now she turned and tripped back 
to her husband’s side without a side-glance, as if 
•such marksmanship was all in her day’s work, 
a thing of nought. Doubt not that her little heart 
was high within her bosom, but no vaunting word 
escaped her lips. Deh-Yan was great. 

The Old Chief was upon his feet. Would his 
nephew throw? ’Twas a fair challenge. 

“On some other day — perhaps,” muttered 
Honk-Ah, confusedly. 

“To-day, and now, my cousin, — or not at all, 
and never!” retorted Pul Yun. “And, bethink 
thee, it is not now for the War-Chieftaincy that 
thou art bidden to throw — ^that is lost to thee — 
but for its reversion. Wilt thou stand third in the 
tribe by out-throwing my wife ? — No! — then thou 
art nought, just a brave among my braves, no 
more, whilst she leads the war-parties in my 
absence.” 


214 


The Master-Girl 


“That is so, — I say it,’' said the Old Chief, still- 
ing the clamour that was arising among the braves. 
“Here stands my daughter, no foreign woman, 
but a full member of the tribe ; no squaw but a 
brave, and a very great spearman.” 

''Witch!'' screamed the cousin, bounding to his 
feet and whirling back his spear. In the twinkling 
of an eye he had quivered and had hurled it at the 
shapely bosom of Deh-Yan. But the Grey Chief 
stepped before her with upraised hands and lips 
opening in rebuke that was never to be uttered. 
Straight betwixt those upraised hands sped the 
spear, and drove its keen chert head deep through 
the neck-cordage and into the great throat artery 
of the Father of the Tribe. 

The bright life-blood spouted high and wide. 
The stricken man staggered, but kept his feet, 
composedly folded his arms, and stood awaiting 
his death. 

A bitter cry of horror burst from the circle 
of braves, a shriller wail from the outer ring of 
women, and as the uproar grew the tall figure of 
the Ancient Leader was seen to totter, sway, and 
fall. 

Pul Yun had leaped to his feet, snatching right 


215 


The Spear-Throwing 

and left for axe and knife in the blind impulse of 
wrath. Honk-Ah, horrorstruck at his impiety, 
stood for some breaths covering his wide open 
mouth with his hand, a petrifaction of remorse, 
whilst his friends fell away from him as from an 
infected thing; then, seeing his enemy and master, 
the New Chief, in whose hand lay his life and his 
limbs to torture at his will, bounding across the 
open circle towards him, he turned and fled with 
winged feet. 

He had yet a chance, not only for life alone, but 
for far more than life, for the Chieftaincy of the 
Tribe! If he could reach covert and maintain 
himself alive for ten days and ten nights the 
Headship of the Sun-Men was his. 

Such was the custom of the tribe. Such was 
the rule of succession of the Priests of Nemi (Kings 
of the Grove) down to the times of the Antonines; 
such, within living memory, was the law of the 
redskins of the Middle States. 

The timber was near; with such a start and on 
so short a course escape seemed possible. Save 
those of the Head Wife, bent in agony upon the 
resolutely-composed face of her dying lord, the eyes 
of all were upon the runners, who had reached a 


2i6 


The Master-Girl 


hundred strides from the lists and were nearing 
the edge of the scrub. The avenger of blood 
carried nought but an axe, he ran desperately, 
but haltingly, for his leg failed him; suddenly he 
stopped, threw, and missed! Honk- Ah drew away, 
and then, — all was momentary, whence came it? — 
What was happening? — it was over — a cry, 
''Moon, help ” had shrilled, — a tense string had 
hummed behind the backs of the gazing crowd, a 
light fledged assegai had sped its curve over their 
heads, had dipped, and was sticking between the 
working shoulder-blades of the murderer. A throw 
prodigious and incredible. The stricken man ran 
staggering for a few paces, then his head went for- 
ward and he pitched upon his face, struggled to his 
knees, and strove to rise. But Pul Yun was after 
him with the long-leaping strides of the master- 
wolf when he hurls himself at the flank of the 
sinking buck. He was upon him, a knife rose and 
fell, all was over. Why did he not take his scalp? 
For what was he waiting? To whom beckoning? 
Round wheeled the tribe to see more of the thrower 
of that amazing cast, and met D^h-Yan, last night 
the foreign woman, and now the just-admitted 
brave, her black eyes burning, her white teeth 


217 


The Spear-Throwing 

a-glitter in the glory of victory. Bow in hand she 
broke through the throng, her light limbs twinkled 
as she raced to her husband’s side. Her bow she 
cast down, her knife was out, an avenging fury 
she knelt upon her fallen foe and tore away his 
scalp as the falcon strips the breast-bone of a 
partridge. 

Her shriek of triumph ended in a peal of elvish 
laughter. Shall we blame her? No, nor praise. 
Why should we? Here stands a primitive human 
document. This was no product of nursery, 
high school, and drawing-room, nor was she an 
unsexed termagant of the slum, neither super- 
civilised nor residual. No, nor an abnormality, 
but something above a typical woman of the 
Old Stone Age, a fine specimen, if you will, of 
woman as we know her in the shaping, half-way 
up from the ridge-browed, spidery-armed, dog- 
toothed Forerunner, who, some hundred thousand 
years or so earlier, had dropped from her tree at 
the cry of her fallen piccaninny, and, greatly dar- 
ing, had beaten off a hyaena with a club. There, 
indeed, stood the First Parent whom we need 
recognise, for, past gainsaying, the crucial moment 
was that which found us upon firm ground instead 


2i8 


The Master-Girl 


of clinging to a branch, which saw us upon two 
feet instead of four, and with a tool in hand. 

The difference betwixt that far-away, hirsute, 
anthropoid heroine who discovered the club, and 
her distant descendant who invented the bow, was 
great, but was chiefly physical. The lengthening 
of the lower limbs and the shortening of the upper, 
changes in the forms of the extremities, a pro- 
gressive opening of the facial angle, and modifica- 
tions in eye, ear, and spinal column had obliterated 
the ape and brought to the birth a stalwart savage, 
ingenious, artistic, and in many ways distinctively 
human without sensibly raising the moral stand- 
ard. Yet another hundred thousand years, more 
or less, would have to elapse ere a Voice should 
cry, “ Love your enemies! ” 

The Master-Girl had already once in her life gone 
as far in that direction as could be expected of her. 
There were no tribal or religious sanctions for spar- 
ing the life of a ruffian who had shed the blood of 
the Father of his People in a treacherous attempt 
upon the wife of his cousin. 

Leaving the corpse to the care of whom it might 
concern, and her weapons to her husband, Deh-Y an 
strode back to the lists swinging the dripping 


219 


The Spear-Throwing 

scalp around her head, singing her chant of triumph 
transfigured, her six feet of supple bronze seeming 
to o’ertop the tallest brave of her tribe. They 
drew away from her cowering, deprecating her 
incantation and the magical potencies of her glance 
and hand; a priestess confessed. 

Meanwhile the widowed Head Wife rent the air 
with her wailing. To her the victor addressed 
herself, a woman to a woman. The mourner had 
seen nothing, knew nothing, nor understood what 
had befallen, until, in answer to her passionate 
appeals for vengeance upon the slayer of her lord, 
the new-come foreign woman laid in her hands 
the wet scalp of the murderer. 

The braves returning from stepping-out the full 
distance of that still only just credible cast, found 
the Head Wife of their dead chief grovelling at the 
feet of the New Leader. 

“Deh-Yan,” said her husband tremulously, him- 
self half afraid of this prodigy to whom he found 
himself mated, “will it please thee to draw thy 
shaft ? They — ^we — do not seem to like to lay hand 
to it. It is still fast in his heart. Its head was 
small enough to pass between his back-ribs. Thou 
wilt remember the arrow, — the last of thy making.’' 


220 


The Master-Girl 


“The white ptarmigan's feather? Yes, I prayed 
to my Totem for its luck when I made it ; and again 
as I loosed. What are they saying ? ’ ' 

“They are hailing thee Chieftainess, — yes, and 
I, too, hail thee!” He came near, very near to 
prostrating himself, but something in her eye, 
some movement of her lip deprecated, forbade. 

From that hour the Master-Girl’s influence 
grew and deepened. 

That shot converted the braves of the Sim 
Totem from spear-throwers to bowmen. In time, 
and, as it seemed, but just in time, an archer-force, 
equipped and trained by their Chieftainess, en- 
countered the long-anticipated raid of the L3mx- 
Men. The rout of the invaders was signal and 
complete. Timely warning of their presence was 
given by the young good wolves which the Master- 
Girl had taught her people to domesticate; these 
warders of the dimness before the dawn held up the 
advance guard of the foe with bristling backs 
and shining teeth, until Deh-Yan had set her battle 
in array. A born general, one of the first, she had 
silently thought out her strategy — piously at- 
tributing its inspiration and success to her Totem, 


221 


The Spear-Throwing 

the homed moon, whose very form she imitated 
in the marshalling of her little force. 

This naked woman- savage had evolved from her 
own clear brain the most consistently successful 
tactic of all subsequent warfare, that deceptive 
movement which consists in refusing battle by the 
attacked centre whilst delivering counterstrokes 
from the converging flanks. 

“The Lynx-Men are very stout-hearted,'’ she 
said. “They have carried matters their own way 
for many years you tell me. — It is well, O Pul 
Yun, for I would have them charge us as an old 
boar charges, without thought of turning or look- 
ing left or right.” She laughed low in her throat, 
but her eye was hard and bright, her braves 
watched her as growing boys watch a man. “Now 
we have them,” she said, as battle was joined; 
‘ ‘remember, if one of them falls by a spear of ours 
I shall want to know whose spear it was that 
transgressed!” 

A minute later and the Sun-Men’s centre, a 
special force of spearmen, trained to practise the 
ruse, after wasting their assegais at idle range, 
were in full retreat upon the stockade — and their 
hows ! — whilst ambuscaded archery was closing in 


222 


The Master-Girl 


Upon both flanks. The enemy, stubborn, haughty, 
and with an unbeaten record, saw nothing, knew 
nothing, until clambering one upon another at the 
stockade like bees that swarm, their backs felt the 
dreadfully-piercing small assegais of their despised 
foes, whilst the bowmen behind the stockade 
struck them down faster than they could climb. 

They died there to a man; not one escaped. It 
was a war-party of Sun-Men disguised in L5mx 
trappings which took the news of the defeat to the 
Quarry-camp. This was the Master-Girl's counter- 
stroke; she led it, — as the song that was sung for 
many generations told, — ^led it in the weed of a 
captive woman, one of a crowd of women, and of 
braves decked out as women, who marched with 
dishevelled hair and downcast heads and with 
hoppled hands! — but with their bows borne for 
them by their (supposed) captors, ready at need. 
The surprise was absolute and final. The Lynx 
Totem was blotted out; only the young, unproved 
girls and the smallest of the toddling boys were 
reserved to be incorporated in the Sun-and-Moon 
Clan, the first of many similar acts of adoption. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE PASSING OP THE MASTER-GIRL 

ND of the rest of the deeds of the Master-Girl, 



and of her extreme wisdom, foresight, and 
daring, what shall I say? — Time would fail me 
to tell of her dealings with the White Wolves and 
the Beaver Totem, the Elks and the Red Clouds, 
and twenty tribes more, yea, and how she, moved 
thereto by memories of early humiliations, crossed 
the ranges in force and wiped out her old people 
the Little Moons; as to which grim deed I desire to 
express no opinion. Human nature, even nowa- 
days, is queer, nor was it less queer in the Days 
of Ignorance. Let us admit that a warfare begun 
in self-defence was carried on for conquest. Her 
new weapon, her generalship carried all before 
her, and in her day the Sun-and-Moon Totem 
waxed great, throve and multiplied, became a 
dominant clan, pushing back the hunting and war 
parties of all other names for a month’s journey 


224 


The Master-Girl 


and more. Nor was it a brief episode, for this 
woman, the great Chieftainess, as men called 
her during her life, and for long after, ruled her 
tribe for so many seasons that if a man were asked 
to tell how long, that man must hold up his two 
full hands six times, and yet shew three fingers 
beyond (“Three whole men and three toes'' by 
Eskimo count). So many times did the Black 
Cock go a-lekking during the reign of the Master- 
Girl. 

In her day every man of her tribe had not less 
than two wives. Yea, even her husband; for, 
being childless herself, she, loving her Pul Yun 
with an exacting and jealous love, was minded 
to see him with a larger family of young braves 
and girls to his name than any other man of the 
Totem, and to this end supplied him with wives 
whom she picked and trained, — conjugal arrange- 
ments distressing to us modems, but still existing 
among the Primitives of the Aures Mountains 
in Southern Algeria, and which in the case of 
Pul Yun and D^h-Yan in no wise lessened the 
reverence which the husband paid to the wife of 
his youth, nor the more exacting and jealous love 
with which she returned his affection. 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 225 

Moreover, did she not arm and train an especial 
force of women archers? — women who hunted by 
moonlight? These and the good wolves of their 
training were the camp-guard, both of the home 
stockade at the Quarries, whither the tribe re- 
moved, and of the flying camps in war-time. 
Sorely dreaded were they by the foeman of other 
totems, as well for their close and accurate shooting 
as for their midnight raids, for the men of the Old 
Stone Age dreaded to go among dark woods for 
good and suflicient reasons, and having this fear 
engrained in their beings, had imagined and come 
to believe in a-many strange and dismal Things 
which haunted the Dark beside those upon which 
an axe could bite, which beliefs are held, or at least 
acted upon, by not a few of their descendants to 
this hour (albeit by daylight they will in no 
wise allow that they feel any nervousness at all, 
nor will admit that anything whatsoever exists to 
warrant it) . 

This amazon force was recruited from among 
the fleetest and hardiest of the immarried girls. 
Admission to its ranks was jealously restricted 
and hedged about according to the manner of 
savages by secret and severe initiatory ceremonies 


15 


226 


The Master-Girl 


celebrated by virgin priestesses under the light 
of the New Moon in forest retreats, to which no 
man was ever admitted. 

And to this, Pul Yun, war-chief and arch-priest 
of the rival Sun-disc cult, was brought to consent, 
an admission of the moral ascendancy of the 
Master-Girl which will not be lost upon the dis- 
cerning reader. 

She would seem to have had a great time of it, 
but of her many campaigns (as of those of Kai 
Khosroo and of Genghis Khan and other con- 
querors whose exploits were too complete to be 
recorded) no faintest hollow whisper has come 
down to us. The chronicle of the First Woman 
Chief (what a wealth of richly-embroidered in- 
cident is lost to mankind!) was writ in that 
earliest cuneiform script, the arrow-head, upon 
that most perishable of material, the bodies of 
her foemen. 

It may be surmised that the movements of the 
tribes whom her conquests dispossessed may 
account for some of the otherwise inexplicable 
migrations and settlements of peoples ignorant of 
the bow, the Australians to wit, or the still lower 
Tasmanians. 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 227 

Proudly she lived, ruling her household vigor- 
ously and strictly, nor did her masterfulness de- 
crease with advancing age. 

And what of the end? what of the final scene 
which closes in and rounds off the longest and 
most eventful of lives? 

To them it came suddenly. Pill Yun, grey, 
hale, unbent, had grown somewhat silent, husband- 
ing breath and powers which he had private 
reasons to suspect were failing, albeit no man of 
his body-guard had yet seen his doubt reflected 
in the silent side-glancing face of a fellow. 

The summer heats were upon the land, a great 
drought, the tall and stalwart elder had over- 
taxed himself in the noon-day sun at a game- 
driving. When the evening meal was cooked, he 
did not eat. Deh-Yan urged uselessly. All that 
night he was restless, dreaming, speaking in his 
sleep, but not of enemies, no, for this the keenly- 
solicitous wife, holding her breath, listened in 
vain. To whom might she lay this sickness? — 
a bewitching, ob6ah-work doubtless, but for ten 
days' march in any direction was there a man 
who dared think in his inmost heart evil of the 


228 


The Master-Girl 


Great Chief? No, there was none in all that 
region that peeped or moved the wing. 

Who in her household then? She brooded, 
vainly pondering. All the next day her man 
lay silent, refusing the various foods which she 
prepared with her own hands. At sunset she 
summoned the clan; her subject wives, their hand- 
maidens, daughters, and slaves sat around the 
silent hut; beyond the royal enclosure in a wider 
ring squatted the body-guard, his sons and grand- 
sons, and the staunchest of the braves of the 
tribe, grizzled ring-men upon whose scarred, brown 
chests shifted and glittered the trophies of forty 
battles. They squatted mute, hand over mouth, 
knowing well what was a-doing inside, jealous, 
remorseful, anxious; someone should die for this! 
— yes, to the fire with her, though she were the 
beauty of the tribe, or with him, if he were the 
best archer of them all I 

D^h-Yan came forth and perambulated the 
concourse, a V-shaped sprig of the witch-hazel in 
her hands; seven times she went through them and 
about them, but the twig turned to none. Rhab- 
domancy had failed her. Silently she had 
come, silently she went, still an-hungered for 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 229 

vengeance, and still unsatisfied re-entered the 
dark hut. 

“It is none of our people,” she said, but there 
was no reply from the sick man. Her breath 
came short, she approached, touched, felt him. He 
was dead — dead of the broken heart which kills 
silently and swiftly so many gallant savages when 
stricken with one of the mysterious sicknesses for 
which they know no remedies and for which they 
cannot account. 

Going forth she dismissed the assembly, bade 
the women of the Royal Household still their 
tongues and their children, and returning to the 
dark wigwam squatted all night beside her dead, 
revolving many things. Once her courage wav- 
ered and her faith in herself. “Husband! Chief! 
Is this my doing?” 

But, for the main of her vigil the heart within 
the woman was insurgent. She had ruled too 
long without the physical or spiritual touch of 
restraint to brook an injury even from Death 
himself. Too proud to weep, and too self-con- 
tained to give vent to the passion of pent wrath 
which burnt her bosom, she crouched dumb and 
suffering whilst the constellations wheeled across 


230 


The Master-Girl 


the black vault overhead, her whole nature 
yearning desperately for her lost mate — ''Give me 
hack my man!” 

Just before the dawn-streak she must have 
slept, for a voice and a presence were in the hut, 
her husband’s, but not as she had hoped to see 
and to hear him, with a clear doom-word as to 
whom she was to hold to account for his death; 
no, nor as she had known him these many years, 
a grey, massive, familiar figure. He returned to 
her smiling and bland, youthful, exquisitely 
beautiful and young, the happy bridegroom of 
her youth, who had been the first to hail her as 
Chief tainess of the tribe. She exclaimed with 
rapture, spread her arms for him, and — he was 
gone. She was alone with the corpse. "He needs 
me!” she said. “Wait for me. Pul Yun. I will 
not be long!” 

In one moment her resolve was taken. All her 
life had been a series of swiftly taken intuitive 
decisions; this was the last. The drowsing 
watchers without found her standing in the rift of 
the hanging skins before the doorway. “Wood,” 
was her word. “Bring wood — much wood, let 
every man, woman, and child bring a fagot, dry 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 23 1 

and fit. Your lord is a-cold and I am minded to 
warm him.’* 

There was something terrible in the calmness 
and intensity of her face, although the words were 
wild enough, for what shall a man need with a 
stack of dry kindling at midsummer. 

“This will surely be a very great and sore burn- 
ing,” muttered this one and that as they went 
their ways to the forest. Hardly dared man or 
woman look one upon another, so heavily lay 
upon all the dread of an accusation of witchcraft, 
of having commerced with the Unseen Powers 
of Darkness to the hurt of their Chief. 

This is the canker of savage life, the haunting, 
still -impending secret terror that walketh in 
darkness, from which few uncivilised communi- 
ties are long free. 

Of this the Sun-and-Moon-Men had known little 
or nothing for the space of four generations. The 
dominant personality of the Master-Girl had 
brooked no interference from self-chosen mystery- 
mongers; sixty years of splendid health, unshaken 
by wound or accident, had afforded scant openings 
for the medicine-man. As High- Priestess of the 
Moon-rite she had been a law unto herself and to 


232 


The Master-Girl 


her people, nor had her unbroken sequence of suc- 
cess in war provided occasions for witch-smellings 
or human sacrifices. Yet, as in the Southern 
Europe of our day the habit of delation has sur- 
vived the Inquisition, so among the people of her 
tribe oral tradition of the dread ritual persisted, 
the rusted and long-disused machinery for exor- 
cism and inquest for necromancy ]ay ready to 
hand, and might be put together and set a- 
working at any juncture should Authority but 
crook its little finger in signal. Yes, now was 
the time, and before night a score of their best 
warriors and handsomest women might be ex- 
piating the crime of “overlooking” the dying 
Chief. 

Deep-rooted indeed must be this antique belief, 
since it died out in our England only within human 
memory (if it be truly dead) and still survives in 
the Celtic Fringe. The sensitive, impressionable, 
poetical Welshman is a thousand years nearer to 
his past than his fellow-subject of King Edward 
across Offa’s Dyke. In broad daylight, nay, 
by gas- and candle-light, the man is as we, and in 
one or two of the arts is more than we; he pro- 
fesses, and truly believes, some evangelical creed. 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 233 

and glances askance at the superstitious mummeries 
of the detested Establishment: but, let sickness, 
sorrow, or misfortune strike him, and, in the deep 
overhung country lanes, or by the hearth whilst 
mountain winds rumble in the stone chimney, 
he begins to doubt. The old faith, the doggerel 
charms, the scraps of nurse-lore, may there not be 
something in them after aJl? He can whisper his 
misgivings to his brother Celt in their native 
speech, it seems natural, possible, probable, but to 
a question put to him in the English he stiffens, 
or more probably puts on that impenetrable air 
of simplicity which has baffled the keenest seeker 
for folk-lore. 

As for his cousin across St. George’s Channel, 
is it yet ten years since a poor epileptic woman was 
held down and burned to death upon her own 
hearthstone by her husband, family, and neigh- 
bours with atrocious circumstances, and according 
to some immemorial rite which might have been 
lifted straight from Mashona-Land or the days 
of the Cave-Men? 

Heavy of heart the wood-collectors departed 
upon their quests, heavy of heart, but light of heel. 
Woe to the laggard who hung back, to the woman 


234 


The Master-Girl 


whose bundle was small, or who seemed to fear, 
and to avoid the eye of the Great Chief tainess. 
Before midday every fagot was ready. Where 
should the pile be built ? — where were the stakes? 

D6h-Y^, hollow-eyed and of an ominous mien, 
paced the circle, took note of the burdens, then, 
whilst all throats grew tight and dry, and all 
breaths thickened, their ruler with regal wave of 
arm bade bear the wood to the inner stockade and 
pile it around the royal wigwam. There was a 
general movement to carry out her orders; this 
was no time for questioning. Whilst this black 
mood of their Chief tainess held, and whilst her 
mate lay silent within (sick? — possessed? — over- 
looked? — forespoken? — ^not dead, oh, surely not 
dead!), at such a juncture, with the air thick with 
doubt and suspicion, prompt, blind, implicit 
obedience was safest. What this last order meant 
who could guess? Many were guessing. What 
might come next, who dare surmise? — yet all 
were surmising. 

Deh-Yan had withdrawn within the wigwam: 
crouched there in the gloom she heard the crackle 
and snap of piled brush. The small place was 
dominated by the presence of mortality in disso- 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 235 

lution. Her mind was divided, half with her 
dead, half turned jealously towards the workers 
without; she felt that they were listening — knew 
their minds and the workings of them, knew that 
hopes of respite were dawning, glancings forward, 
previsions of a possible sequel, other than the one 
which each feared. One event was coming home 
to them, the supersensitive faculties of the savage 
at full strain could get no tidings of the Chief who 
had withdrawn himself from his braves for two 
days. This absence, this silence spoke but one 
word — death! 

Then, as she mused, something moved in the 
darkness behind her with the quiet, unbreathing, 
soft sinuosity of a snake. Turning swiftly she 
pounced and caught — a slim ankle I Her captive 
lay mute, panting thickly, shuddering strongly. 
Deh-Y an without speaking ran an open hand over 
the features, followed out the limbs, and beside 
the relaxed hand lay something which she had not 
handled for many a year, reminiscent of her far- 
away youth, her own personal fire-sticks, long 
disused. 

“This is little Fallow-Doe,’' she said softly and 
without anger, naming her dead lord’s favourite 


236 


The Master-Girl 


granddaughter, “but what does young Fallow- 
Doe here? unbidden in the place of death?” 

“Oh, Mother,” whimpered the girl, “I knew — 
I could not help it — I thought — Yes, I have eyes 
too — Thou art leaving us! Oh, do not forsake 
thy children! — What shall we do? — ^To whom 
shall we look? Yes, He there is dead, — we know, 
but how, we know not. All must die. Our times 
come. Maybe his time came. I do not think 
that any of the tribe bore a black heart towards 
him. But, O my Mother, if it is Obi (and thou 
knowest best) , charge whom thou wilt. Charge 
me! I will die for him, though my heart is as 
white as a full moon; but, oh, do not leave us!” 

The mourning widow withheld her answer, and 
when the word came, it was breathed softly and 
motherly: “Little girl, thy heart is white, I know 
it; but no whiter than the hearts of the rest. Get 
thee gone now by the way thou earnest, and say 
nothing of thy coming hither until the third day at 
evening.” 

The child slipped eel-like under the tent-skirts 
and into the loosely piled fagots. D6h-Yan 
patted the space left vacant and smiled, for the 
fire-sticks were gone too. She arose, gravely smil- 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 237 

ing, and took from a skin wallet that hung high a 
pair of round stones, dense and very heavy, and 
struck them softly one against the other, and lo, 
the darkness was lightened with pale green sparks, 
for these were nodules of pyrites, her latest dis- 
covery, and one which would die with her to be 
rediscovered in later times. “You will not fail 
me, I think,” she murmured, and began to arrange 
the tinder, crooning the first notes of her death- 
song to herself as she worked. 

Wave after wave of memory flowed in upon her 
out of the long forgotten past, and with each 
some trait of her dead husband travelled towards 
her, towered, and subsided. Battle touches, his 
shield before her, himself exposed, his shout of 
triumph rang in her ears as her shaft went home. 
Or a hot, breath-catching moment in the life of a 
big-game huntress, a lioness with ears laid to her 
skull, and with head, neck, back, and tail in one 
level tawny line, broke covert and made for her 
snarling, and again it was Pill Yun who had 
stridden between her and the wrinkled black lips. 
She saw him leap the fence of the enclosure and 
throw himself in the path of the stampeding herd 
of buck when the leaders of the driven mob 


238 


The Master-Girl 


swerved in the very jaws of the hopo and were 
breaking back. What a man he had been! — yes, 
they had lived, they two! 

And about the time that the heat of the day 
began to wane, the watching tribe heard her voice 
raised in song within the royal wigwam, and 
certain duller sounds as of soft stones pounded, 
and, whilst all strained eye and ear, fearing the 
approach of the unknown with hearts high in their 
throats, the afternoon sunshine was dimmed by a 
thin smoke, and above the ridge of the wigwam, 
where the poles crossed, the air grew glassy like 
troubled water. Then, whilst the dry sticks 
crackled, and here and there a green one spat, 
the pale flame that is invisible in the sunlight 
turned the wood grey and shrivelled the skin 
hangings. The death-chant pealed intermit- 
tently from within, interrupted by coughing, but 
ever resumed. Soon the whole pile was alight, 
and on every side the crowd, though pressed upon 
from outside, was driven back by the heat. 

“And, oh, I did steal these — and I did pray 
her not to leave us!” wept Fallow-Doe. 

Strong shudders shook the throng of watchers. 
Wild men, whose grandsires this woman (think — 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 239 

a woman!) had brought to heel, whose fathers 
she had trained to the bow and schooled in her 
battle tactics, wept, actually wept I 

For the Chief tainess whose death-song arose 
fitfully and faintly above the roar of the flame, had 
been more than a great warrior; the dead Chief 
had been that, a giant in fight, terrible at the axe, 
with a rush and a shout like the charge and the 
roar of a rutting stag. But, she! — how put it? — 
at once desperate and cautious, patient as a wait- 
ing heron, sudden in attack as the same bird when 
its uncoiled neck drives home the dagger-beak! 
Other leaders were pricked to hot decisions by 
the approach of imsuspected peril ; she, for so long 
their pride and marvel, had planned her battle ere 
the tassels hung upon the hazel, and won it after 
the nuts were ripe — yea, and ever upon ground 
of her own choice. Did the Lynxes pounce at 
dawn, or the Sitting Bulls await her coming, 'twas 
all one, the event fell as she had foretold. (Wail, 
ye women!) Other tribes swarmed disorderly to 
the onset and closed with clamour and confusion; 
she had taught her braves the true method of 
advancing silently and in line; she too had drilled 
them (at what pains and with what sternness!) 


240 


The Master-Girl 


to a battle formation already described (subse- 
quently reinvented by a later savage genius — 
Tchaka) — compelling her centre to mark time 
until her convergent horns had enveloped the 
headlong foe and the killing began to a general 
shout of “0 Moon!” Each of her battles had 
been an antedated Cannae. Tribe after tribe 
(names now to the young draft), scornful of 
woman-led warriors, had charged cheering into 
her traps and perished, for no quarter was given 
in the Stone Age, nor had the Master-Girl a use 
for a living enemy. Groan, ye men, nor spare 
your tears for once, though the children and women 
see that your cheeks are wet ! 

The groaning of the braves deepened, the keen- 
ing of the women grew shrill, but from the core 
of the heat where the naked wigwam poles, 
stripped now of their gear, were blazing above 
the pyre like torches, came never a sound. 

All through that afternoon the tribe watched 
and waited. The sun sank to her couch blood- 
red, and laying her broad face upon a hill-shoulder, 
forebore, as minded to see the last of her priest. 
The fire was burning itself out, but was still too 
hot to approach. A circular rampart of glistering 


The Passing of the Master-Girl 241 

whiteness lay there with the air shuddering above 
it. Some of the ash retained the shape of bavin 
and fagot, more was flaky and formless as snow, 
but pulsing through it came rosy flushes from the 
glowing heart within. But, ah, in the centre 
space where the wigwam had stood, the Great 
Father and the Great Mother of their people, they 
who but two days since had stood for Authority, 
Strength, Courage, and Wisdom, were now white 
calcined bones! 

It was then that a wonder and a portent ap- 
peared, for the tribe raising scorched faces from 
the dreary place of burning, beheld one half of 
the sky steeped as it were with blood, and the Sun, 
their Goddess, wading therein, whilst near to her, 
and within that ensanguined fleld, stood the first 
presence of the young Moon, a bow of palest green. 

Then did the Eldest Son of the Dead arise, and 
with solemnly uplifted hands salute the Twin 
Totems. “Ye are there,” he cried. “We hail 
ye both. Heavenly Watchers over your children!” 


EPILOGUE 


r\ARKNESS enwrapped him, comfortably 
soft, thick, and warm. He neither knew 
nor cared how long he had lain in it, nor if at any 
time he had ever known other conditions. He was 
just a motionless atom, or congeries of atoms, 
without ambitions, cares, or resentments, yet 
withal, a modicum of self-knowledge. 

For instance, certain black marks outstanding 
from a dull luminosity over against him connoted 
definite ideas of origin and locality. Ightham 
Fissures — such were the marks, thick, heavy, 
distinct lettering in brownish black, output of a 
small hand-press used for printing museum labels. 
(Oh, it was all known to him, the oddness consisted 
in his knowing as much and no more, nor feeling 
any especial curiosity for information unexpressed 
by these symbols.) 

Then, by gradual but sensible degrees, the 
intensity of the darkness yielded; and, as layer 
after layer was lifted from him, or washed off, he 

242 


243 


Epilogue 

recognised himself more fully. He was a Cal- 
careous Accretion — (more black typing showed). 
He was being treated with weak acid baths. There 
were hopes entertained of the result. (He over- 
heard someone say so.) He began to be interested 
in his own case ; these accretions were little gran- 
ular nodules found among the old dead earth of 
the clefts and fissures of the Ightham chalk; 
dead earth which had slipped down these rifts in 
the dead-and-gone long-ago when they were natu- 
ral pitfalls in the surface of an Arctic tundra. 
In winter their dangers would have been hidden 
by the lips of drifted snow through which an un- 
wary reindeer calf had fallen to its doom. (He 
remembered that reindeer calf, also the Arctic 
fox which was tempted down by the meat, and 
the lemming which was chased down by the stoat; 
and how neither fox, lemming, nor stoat ever got 
out again.) In summer insects fell in and died 
there. 

His own case filled him with mild speculative 
hopes (the acid was fining him down, his chalky 
envelopes were leaving him, coat after coat.) Oh, 
there was something inside — a something which 
was probably interesting — possibly a New Fact! 


244 Epilogue 

(Here anticipation awoke in him.) Suppose, now, 
the chitinous core of him when washed clean 
and dissolved out should be recognisably Bombus 
hyperhoreusj the big bumble bee of the Arctic, the 
one so rare in collections, the insect which seems 
almost immune to frost, and goes booming from 
one little frozen flower-bell to another during the 
brief Northern summer whilst snowflakes eddy 
around it! Such a find would be valuable, and 
new! Confirmatory as to climatic conditions, 
too. 

''M'yess!'* Someone was speaking above 
him, someone’s finger pressed his wrist; he dis- 
tinguished the ticking of a watch. He opened 
his eyes. 

''W-What is all this?” and behold that under- 
bred, uninteresting young doctor was looking 
down upon him with the subdued pride with which 
a medical man regards a case which will do him 
credit. (He had put a solid fortnight of holiday 
into it, for which, as he knew well, he could not 
legally recover a sou.) 

The Professor (he was now the Professor again, 
and all the black marks, labels, and Ightham- 
fissure business were gone) found himself bursting 


245 


Epilogue 

with a huge, novel experience, which it behooved 
him to get into writing if he died for it. 

“P-pencil and paper — please.” 

And, eventually, he was allowed to have his 
way. 


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